What does this mean? It means that anyone in the village who was suffering from unnecessary blindness, or was at risk of going blind due to preventable causes, will have been treated. Thanks to our incredible donors, an entire village will be set free of avoidable blindness. Thank you!

Below are photos of the work that we, in collaboration with our partner St. Gregorios Balagram Eye Hospital, are doing in Kanapur in advance of World Sight Day.

Our mission to eliminate avoidable blindness on a sustainable basis from Kanapur aligns with this year’s World Sight Day theme, “No More Avoidable Blindness.”  In fact, our proposal to hold a public celebration event in Kanapur was recently awarded the Innovation Excellence Award by Vision 2020 India, a national eye health advocacy group that has endorsed our Hospital-Based Community Eye Health Program in India.

We don’t just talk about eliminating avoidable blindness; we’re doing it. And we look forward to celebrating our achievements – made possible by our generous donors – on World Sight Day!

The post Celebrating World Sight Day 2014: No More Avoidable Blindness! appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

Yet it may be shocking to realize that in the time it took you to read this paragraph, a child somewhere in the developing world permanently lost his or her vision. And even more shocking: the blindness was likely preventable.

Many babies in developing countries are born with neonatal conjunctivitis, an infection that causes a thick pus-like drainage from the eyes. Left untreated, it can lead to vision loss and blindness.

Fortunately, this horrible condition can be prevented simply and inexpensively by putting antibiotic drops in newborn babies’ eyes.

Operation Eyesight is training community midwives and traditional birth attendants in Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and India to use these eye drops, along with other preventative measures, to prevent infection and save babies’ vision. These public health training programs are supported by our generous donors, and are helping make fundamental health care changes that will improve lives today and for generations to follow.

May 5 is International Day of the Midwife; and in honour of all babies and their mothers, we invite you to give the mom in your life an unconventional Mother’s Day gift this year. Before May 12, visit our Gift Guide and help Operation Eyesight save babies’ vision by providing proper training to midwives and traditional birth attendants!

The post It’s a wonderful world… for a baby who can see appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

That’s why we were so appreciative when Dan Parlow – who is both a busy Vancouver lawyer and the chair of Operation Eyesight Canada – was able to come to Calgary for last week’s board of directors’ meeting. It was great to have him here in person, rather than conference calling into the meeting as he and many of our board members usually do.

Dan sat down with our staff to talk about why the cause of avoidable blindness is important to him, and why he commits his leadership and vision to our organization.

Daniel S. Parlow, chair of Operation Eyesight Canada, is a partner with the Vancouver legal firm Kornfeld Mackoff Silber LLP. We thank him, and all our board members, for their commitment to our mission!

The post Don’t take blindness sitting down: An interview with our board chair appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

For years now, we’ve known that next to cataracts, the second leading cause of avoidable blindness in developing countries throughout the world is failed cataract surgeries. It’s a terrible shame. And yet, it continues!

The practice of offering substandard care to eye patients is fueled by the urgency to reduce the huge crowd of people still waiting for cataract surgery. But there is another way to look at this, and that is through the eyes of people threatened by blindness.

In my last blog post, I asked you to picture a poor Indian woman who is going blind from cataracts. If we could actually take the time to know her, we would learn why she refused free medical help. We may discover that she has some questions of her own, such as, “Why are you offering to do this for me?” and “Can I really trust you?”

We got to know thousands of others with similar stories. We did it by recruiting people from these same villages and teaching them about basic eye care. These Community Health Workers were trained to take this knowledge back to their villages and share it with the people. We learned a lot from the people, and they learned a lot of about eye health and the hospitals that wanted to help them.

For the hospitals we support, the concept and practice of quality permeates the whole organization. What I described in the last paragraph is quality that cannot be easily measured: service to individuals, trust and respect. This goes hand-in-hand with quality that can be measured: hospital cleanliness, clinical outcomes, infection rates, etc.

If these hospitals follow accepted international protocols and standards, failures from infection are kept to a minimum. This translates into good outcomes, and word gets around – reputation and trust is built. Out in the surrounding villages, the community workers help alleviate patients’ fears, and they facilitate the process of diagnosis, treatment and recovery.

This cycle of relationship and healing just keeps rolling along, contributing to sustainability. In fact, we have a saying: “Sustainability is a by-product of quality.” And that is how avoidable blindness is reduced in an entire district – people within reach of the hospital have the opportunity to get the help they need, and blindness that can be treated or prevented becomes a thing of the past.

At Operation Eyesight, we are also working to eliminate the backlog of people who are blind from cataracts. But our commitment to the poor of India and Africa requires that we take their needs and fears seriously.

That tribal woman I mentioned? She can see now. And she says thanks.

Learn more about the difference our Community Health Workers are making!

The post We must see through their eyes (Part 2 of 2) appeared first on Operation Eyesight.