A prime objective of the Paula Carr Trust is to help prevent blindness from diabetic eye disease, which is the largest cause of blindness in the working population in the UK.
The Kent Retinal Eye Screening Service was set up by the Paula Carr Trust in 1994, using one Mobile Unit to screen 2,500 patients a year across South East Kent. In the past fifteen years we have expanded the service and screen 55,000 diabetic patients at 280 surgeries across Kent from ten mobile units and two static cameras.
The onset of blindness caused by diabetic eye disease is preventable, if identified early.
All the running and staffing costs of our eye screening service are met by the Primary Care Trusts in East and West Kent, to whom we provide our eye screening service.
In 2004 The Trust built and equipped the new Kent Screening and Training Centre for Diabetic Eye Disease:
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to provide fully equipped integrated facilities for the diagnosis and treatment of diabetic eye disease
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to provide a suitable environment for us to report and grade the 220000 eye images, which need to be processed every year
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to make a centre of excellence available for the teaching and training of retinal photographers, screeners, graders and optometrists at a national level
