The Miranza Foundation and Aspace Gipuzkoa join forces to improve the eye health of people with cerebral palsy
In order to provide greater eye care for people with cerebral palsy, the Miranza Foundation visited the Aspace Gipuzkoa facilities to offer a full eye examination to fifteen cerebral palsy patients who belong to this association of families.
The team of volunteers from the Miranza Foundation was made up this time by ophthalmologists, optometrists and other professionals from our Miranza Begitek and Miranza Ókular clinics.
According to Dr Aritz Urcola, one of the ophthalmologists to take part in the examinations, “patients with cerebral palsy experience a variety of eyesight problems due to the impact of the disorder on their nervous system. These problems often include refractive errors (myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism), strabismus (eye misalignment), amblyopia (lazy eye), nystagmus (involuntary eye movement) or eyelid ptosis (dropping of the eyelid), among others”.
Dr Ricardo Cocco, who is also a specialist at Miranza Begitek and Miranza Ókular, and a volunteer for the Miranza Foundation, added that “the difficulty of performing eye examinations on this group of people must also be considered, due to possible motor, cognitive and communicative limitations, which means that eyesight problems in patients with cerebral palsy are often diagnosed and treated at a late stage due to a lack of appropriate care”.
Hence the importance of the combined efforts of the two specialised organisations, Aspace Gipuzkoa and the Miranza ophthalmology clinics, actively involved in improving the eye health of the more vulnerable groups through the programme “Vemos contigo” (We See With You), by the Miranza Foundation.
For Ana Sequí, director of the Miranza Foundation, “this first campaign of eye examinations along with Aspace Gipuzkoa enables us to expand our work to different areas and groups at risk, in addition to other campaigns we have already completed this year for patients with intellectual disabilities in Alicante or autism in Seville. This experience shows that providing better eyesight helps greatly in increasing the opportunities of development and integration”.
“Being able to form part of this type of initiatives and promoting this project is exciting, and if we are able to improve the quality of life of some of these people, our goal will have been more than met and it will encourage us to continue with future editions of the programme”, says Nerea Sagastume, manager at Miranza Begitek and Miranza Ókular.
