The Rotary Club of Asbury Park is hosting its first annual polar plunge Jan. 31 to raise funding for cornea transplants to those who can not afford them.
Registration for the event is $10 and begins at at 11 a.m. at Tim McCloone’s Supper Club on the boardwalk in Asbury Park. The plunge is at noon at the Fifth Avenue Beach.
Traudy Grande, Rotary Club member, said the Eye Rescue Project helps those in Third World or developing countries go from non-seeing to seeing.
Grande said for every $2,000 raised a person with corneal blindness will receive sight.
The program is offered in conjunction with an organization called Tissue Banks International, a non-profit and surgeons who donate their skill and time to complete the transplants.
Grande said Tissue Banks International is the largest provider of safe human corneas.
“They harvest the corneas from a deceased person and make sure they are free of disease,” she said.
The surgeons provide their services free of charge and Rotary covers expenses, so recipients pay nothing.
Grande said patients receive either one or both corneas depending on the need.
She told of an Iraqi girl, blind from birth, who received one cornea.
“She was born blind and was given one good cornea, now she can see for the first time,” Grande said. “In developing countries, they don’t have programs for blind people.”
“This program takes them from not seeing to seeing,” she said.
Numerous area businesses are sponsoring the event.
For more information call 908-309-7320.
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