Consider this on Mother’s Day: Women suffer a greater risk of blindness

Ensuring women and children have equitable access to eye health services is a challenge in many developing countries. This challenge needs to be addressed because access issues, along with early promotion and prevention strategies, are fundamental – not only to healthy eyes but to healthy communities as well.

In the developing world, many women are threatened by blindness and low vision.

Many women in India suffer from vision problems, even when eye care is available to them. Reasons may include their perceived status in the family, or distances to a clinic, or other priorities that are deemed more important (like taking care of the rest of the family!). As a result, women are more likely to become blind.

By reaching out to the community through community based programs staffed by local people, Operation Eyesight is helping to overcome some of these barriers. Since most of the people running these programs are women, we are also providing women in general with a stronger voice in the health care system.

These programs not only help direct people to higher levels of eye health services for treatment, they also promote prevention practices such as good nutrition, prenatal care and immunization. The causes of childhood blindness are generally the same things that cause children to die. Women and children (and by extension the whole community) benefit from these community based services that, in promoting eye health, also promote healthy communities.

May 8^th is Mother’s Day. Consider giving a gift to the mother in your life and, by doing so, help mothers in India and Africa. See the Gift Guide section of our website.