The Sunday Times Christmas Appeal in 2006 raised more than £2m. Every five seconds someone in the world goes blind and a child goes blind every minute.

Around 75% of this blindness is either preventable or reversible. Sunday Times readers’ money was matched pound for pound by Standard Chartered Bank. This is how it made a difference:

- 470,000 people in Bangladesh have had their sight restored through cataract operations and other treatments

- 982, 217 children have been given vitamin- A tablets — essential for healthy eyesight

- 1,056,968 people will have been treated with Mectizan by the end of this year. Mectizan prevents river blindness, an infection caused by a water-borne parasite

Encouraged by the support of Sunday Times readers and its employees, Standard Chartered announced a further pledge of £13.5m for eye care to poor urban areas to fund the development of sustainable eye-care services in deprived areas of 20 cities by 2015.