The fight for sight: Lions Club vying for new testing machines

On Saturday morning the eastern Idaho Lions Club hosted its sixth annual Monopoly tournament to raise money for new machines to help detect eye problems in kids across the region.

“To Dubois to Idaho Falls, to St. Anthony, we are all going to have access to these machines and take it into our screenings that we do at schools,” East Idaho Lions Club District Governor Ron Gills said.

Currently Gills is trying to raise the $15,000 needed to bring four of these machines into Pocatello for the first time. He said the Lions Club already started using these machines in Idaho Falls and this past year alone they were able to screen about 3,500 kids throughout the city between kindergarten and sixth grade.

Gills said eyesight issues are increasing throughout the nation and these machines will detect amblyopia, or lazy eye, in kids before it is too late to fix.

He said kids as young as sixth months old can be tested.