About Us

Who We Are

Retina NZ is a voluntary organisation and a registered charity. We are a member organisation of Retina International, and the AMD Alliance International. We are also a consumer group of the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind, but you do not have to be an RNZFB member to join us.

Our membership is open to anyone with a retinal disorder or damage, regardless of their degree of visual impairment.

Family and friends of people with retinal conditions are welcome to join too. We also have members with a professional interest in retinal conditions and visual impairment.

Most of our members have degenerative retinal disorders such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP), macular degeneration (MD), Stargardt disease, and choroideremia.  Other members have retinal damage as a result of diabetes, degenerative myopia, or retinal detachments which may have occurred spontaneously or resulted from injury.

Some of these eye conditions are very rare. Others, like diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), are becoming much more common, the first because of the increase of diabetes in the general population, and the second because of our ageing population. AMD is the leading cause of sight loss in New Zealand and other countries with similar population and health profiles.

What We Do

Our aims are to promote and foster:

• public awareness of retinal disorders;
• information about retinal disorders and services for people with retinal disorders;
• mutual support by and for people with retinal disorders (and their families), and
• research into retinal disorders, their causes and effects, treatments and eventual cure.

We maintain links with the research community, and with professional organisations like the Save Sight Society and the New Zealand Association of Optometrists who are active in promoting eye health and awareness of the causes of vision loss.

We produce a large quarterly newsletter for our members, and co-ordinate a telephone-based peer support network that provides non-medical advice and information free to callers within New Zealand.

Any donations we receive go into our research fund to support medical and scientific research into retinal disorders.

Getting Together

Our Annual General Meeting and Conference are held in a different part of New Zealand each year.  We like to hold this event on World Retina Day (the last Saturday in September) but this isn't always possible, so be sure to check the actual date on our News & Events page.

We also have several local groups in or near the main centres which hold meetings where members can socialise, meet others with eye conditions similar to their own, and learn from guest speakers.

We are happy to help members set up more of these self-help groups in their own areas. If you would like to get a small group started, let us know.

Our Executive

Our current office holders, elected at our AGM on 27 August 2011 are:

President: Fraser Alexander
Email: president@retina.org.nz

Membership Officer: Elizabeth East
Email: membership@retina.org.nz
Phone: 04 299 1801 or 0800 233 833

Treasurer: Kiran Valabh

Committee Members: Linda Bartlett, Sue Emirali, Zane Bartlett, and Petronella Spicer.

Lyn Morgan provides us with secretarial assistance but is not an elected member of the Executive.

More contact details are available on our Contact Us page.