Inverloch community unites for vital eye research fundraiser
THE INVERLOCH Esplanade Hotel was transformed into a hub of scientific hope and community spirit last week to host the highly anticipated Team Sisters Eye Health Night.
Supported by the Inverloch Lions Club alongside Bendigo Bank Inverloch the charity dinner raised a substantial sum for the Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA).
Over the past four years Team Sisters, Kerry Fitzgerald, Leesa Willmott and Sharon Oates, all from South Gippsland, have ridden their bikes thousands of kilometres to raise money for the research which will potentially save them from blindness in years to come.
Their father Colin Willmott from Wonthaggi is already afflicted with the debilitating disease and is legally blind, a devastating illness which took him away from the dairy farm he so loved and has made him reliant on others.
All three sisters have discovered they carry the gene with the potential for blindness.
“Our incentive to find a cure is personal and we are doing all we can to assist the very clever scientists working in this area to find a cure as soon as possible,” Sharon Oates said.
Ms Oates and her sisters welcomed the nearly 100 people who attended the fundraising evening in Inverloch, which included State Nationals MP Melina Bath, Bass Coast councillors Meg Edwards, Jan Thompson and Rochelle Halstead.
All proceeds from the major raffle, community donations and $10 from all ticket sales for the evening were directed straight to CERA.
Professor Lauren Ayton AM, co-head of the Retinal Gene Therapy Unit at CERA, opened presentations by discussing inherited retinal diseases (IRDs) and detailed the current pipeline of experimental therapies, including gene technologies that offer new hope to patients.
Associate Professor Luis Alarcon-Martinez, head of Visual Neurovascular Research at CERA, shared his discovery of tunnelling nanotubes, ultra-thin structures that connect blood vessels in the eye and regulate blood flow.
The final presentation was delivered by Dr Kristen Kinghorn from biopharmaceutical company Apellis, which has focused on geographic atrophy (GA), the advanced dry form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
The Inverloch Lions Club managed local logistics and Bendigo Bank Inverloch provided corporate sponsorship to maximise the donation to CERA.
“We would like to sincerely thank everyone who has supported us over the last four years and in particular the local community and our wonderful sponsors,” Ms Oates said.
