A YORK Optometrist has been awarded the MBE in the New Year Honours for her work in supporting visually impaired patients in Africa.

Ruth Perrott has visited the continent sixteen times, providing spectacles, low vision aids and optical training for remote village communities and hospitals. Until the pandemic, she went annually.

Ruth, who works in Acomb as a behavioural or developmental optometrist providing specialist help to children and adults with reading difficulties, has received support in the SpecSort project from Rotary York Ainsty.

Members help sort, cleanse, measure and pack the spectacles into libraries of spectacles, which are essential to her work.

The project started in 1991 following visit with a combined Vision Aid Overseas and Operation Raleigh project and Ruth has travelled four times to Malawi in support of Gill and David Mason’s mission from Acomb Methodist Church.