Donor
Tai Hung Fai Charitable Foundation
Founded in 2005, the Tai Hung Fai Charitable Foundation is committed to helping disadvantaged elderly and underprivileged children throughout Hong Kong, providing scholarships, a food bank, disease and medical research, medical support, health checks and university research.
Through the Foundation, its founder Dr Edwin Leong Siu-hung, who is chairman and founder of Tai Hung Fai Enterprise Company Limited, established the PolyU-Henry G Leong Mobile Integrative Health Centre, a vehicle that visits selected districts in Hong Kong to provide free health checks and monitoring to needy elderly people. Equipped with advanced facilities, the Centre also serves as a cross-disciplinary research and teaching and learning platform for health care professionals and students. Over the past years, the Centre has served over 3,000 elderly people, who have made more than 33,000 visits. It also offers valuable clinical placement opportunities for students of our Faculty of Health and Social Sciences through their participation in supporting the Centre’s operations.
Himself a successful entrepreneur, Dr Leong saw his own company grow from a small set-up into a diversified property company. He has supported local universities in the creation of a training programme for care workers of the elderly, in setting up professorships for research into related aspects, and in sponsoring scholarships for students in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland.
Appointee
Professor Chi-ho To
Professor Chi-ho To joined PolyU in 1993 and was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2005. He is currently Head of the School of Optometry. Professor To has published extensively in top journals, on topics related to myopia (shortsightedness) and ageing-eye diseases such as glaucoma. He also serves on the editorial boards of a number of major ophthalmic journals.
Some 20-25% of young Asian adults have severe myopia, which can lead to blinding diseases such as glaucoma, cataract, and retinal degeneration as they age. With another member of PolyU’s Centre for Myopia Research as co-principal investigator, Professor To won a gold medal with the jury's commendation and the grand prize at the prestigious 39th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva in 2011, as well as an award from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology in 2005, for their research which has led to the invention of a novel contact lens that slowed down the progression of myopia by 50% in children (in its first clinical controlled trial).
Glaucoma, the world’s leading cause of irreversible blindness, is frequently associated with excessive eye pressure. Professor To discovered the cellular transport system that produces eye pressure, which has exposed new cellular targets for the development of potent treatments for glaucoma.
