Steve Brine, MP for Winchester & Chandler's Ford and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health, has visited his local Specsavers to see for himself the range of eye health and audiology services that are available on the high street.
The MP was welcomed to the store by the two directors: optometrist Malini Barchha and dispensing optician Krupesh Barchha.
The store, which has been open for more than 30 years, carries out around 1,000 eye examinations a month, runs eye health clinics for minor eye conditions and offers a full clinical assessment and fitting of hearing aids under contract with the NHS. It is shortly going to be taking delivery of a state-of-the-art Optical Coherence Tomography machine (OCT), which is usually found in hospital eye departments and helps to detect eye diseases years earlier than traditional methods.
Ophthalmic director Malini said: “We were really delighted to see Mr Brine in store, and tell him all about the work we do to keep the eyes and ears of Winchester healthy. Being at the heart of our community is really important to us, and we will keep on striving to develop what we do to make our service even better.”
Specsavers director of professional services, Paul Carroll, said: “With the recently published NHS Long Term Plan focusing on prevention, this was a great opportunity to showcase how community optometrists and audiologists can help to keep people healthy and take the pressure off hospitals. We are all very grateful to Mr Brine for taking the time to visit the store and meet the team.”
Steve Brine said: “I was delighted to be able to drop into Specsavers on the High Street and see the team in action. Prevention is my priority within the NHS, and it was good to be able to discuss this in store and the very necessary focus on prevention within our Long Term Plan.”
