From Carter’s ‘Infantsee’ project to ‘First Look’

I was only 13 when Jimmy Carter became the 39th United States President. Since both my parents were avid newspaper readers, I heard them talk about him as someone who was expected to change things at the White House after the Watergate scandal.

Since the announcement of Carter’s passing last week, I have been glued to my phone watching YouTube documentaries on him, viewing various interviews, and discovering how he had spent his life after his presidency serving different countries through Habitat for Humanity. These included the Philippines, where he noted that during his visit, about 14,000 volunteers came to build more than 280 houses.

Though saddened, we are now about to reap the benefits of one of his legacy projects. We will be conducting a seminar on examining the vision of infants aged 6 to 12 months. Former president Carter was instrumental in the launch of this project in the US. Called Infantsee, it was an undertaking he supported through the American Optometric Association (AOA). Its goal is to catch or detect early vision problems among infants to avoid amblyopia or lazy eye.

Carter was inspired to support this cause because his grandchild was diagnosed with a lazy eye, which could have been avoided if it had been detected early. Today, Filipino optometrists will be adapting the exact template the AOA used, but with the name First Look.

There are so many vision problems among infants that can be picked up by trained eye care practitioners. These vision problems, if detected early enough, can avoid or lessen potential learning-related problems.

Carter’s success with Infantsee was mainly because it connected him personally with his grandchild. Developing First Look in the Philippines is also personal to me because I have seen so many parents unable to bring their infants to an eye care practitioner due to lack of funds.

Myopia (nearsightedness), which is the other global pandemic (see “Myopia: The other pandemic,” 6/21/20), if detected early, can be managed to lessen the possibility of eye diseases which can become a burden to families and to society.

The First Look project is open to qualified families at no fee. This is the condition set by the Professional ODs Society (PODS) for eye care practitioners who want to be trained under the program.

Carter and professor Glen Steele were gracious enough to volunteer to train Filipino optometrists, including AOA officials, using the Infantsee system. PODS also had two industry partners—Hoya and Jollibee—which provided free eyeglasses and food, respectively. This was a project with Union Church of Manila which, incidentally, was the first office of Habitat for Humanity in the Philippines.

There is so much to be done to address the issue of lack of infant vision assessment in the country. But the journey begins, as it always does, with the proverbial first step—a First Look.

Carmen Abesamis-Dichoso,
carmen.dichoso@gmail.com