Our Kenya programs created a tremendous impact in 2016, especially those benefitting children. Together with Seeing is Believing (SiB) and other organizations, we continued an innovative Child Eye Health project to reduce avoidable blindness and visual impairment in children. In 2016, we focused on service delivery, clinical assessment, field monitoring, advocacy and sustainability. We screened over 67,000 children for eye health problems and treated more than 3,000 children. We also assisted with ophthalmic clinical officer assessments and participated in advocacy meetings with educators. With targets and sustainability strategies now in place, the Child Eye Health project was handed over to the ministries of health and education, who will provide continuous eye care services for children.

Thanks to our GivingTuesday 2015 donors, we screened nearly 20,000 students from over 40 different schools in Narok County in 2016. Over 500 students were treated for various eye conditions. Teachers and ophthalmic clinical officers also educated students on eye health and sanitation.

With our partners, we scaled up the PEEK school screening program in Trans Nzoia County. PEEK (Portable Eye Examination Kit) is an application enabling teachers to screen students for vision problems using a mobile phone. Thanks to funding through SiB, we implemented the PEEK system at Kitale Eye Unit and two satellite clinics, and provided refresher training for teachers who had been part of our pilot project the previous year. In 2016, over 40,000 students were screened across 70 schools, and nearly 870 of the children were treated for various eye health issues.

With support from SiB, we continued to strengthen our community outreach programs in the former Rift Valley Province. In 2016, over 100,000 patients were screened for eye problems. In collaboration with the county government, we established a new eye unit at Huruma Sub-County Hospital. We also supported training for three ophthalmic nurses and one cataract surgeon.

And finally, with support from The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, we continued implementing the SAFE strategy to eliminate the blinding eye disease trachoma. Working with Narok County Referral Hospital, we trained 121 community health workers as Trachomatous Trichiasis (TT) case finders to help identify those suffering from the late stage of the disease, refer people for surgery and follow up with patients. Over 41,000 people were screened for TT, of which 358 were identified and 273 received surgeries. We also educated 15 school communities on sanitation and eye health, and trained 30 community health volunteers to facilitate Community-Led Total Sanitation programs. This resulted in the construction of 11 new latrines, increasing latrine coverage by 24 percent in the targeted communities.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? Just how much good we can do together? So much work has already been done, but there’s still a lot more to do! To help us continue our work in Kenya, please consider making a gift through our Gift Guide. No gift is too small! Together we can eliminate avoidable blindness – For All the World to See!

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Remember taking Flintstones Complete vitamins as a kid? And I’m sure you’ve seen those princess and superhero vitamin gummies you can buy for children nowadays.

We Canadians have convenient access to inexpensive multivitamins; it can be easy to take those gummies or capsules we give our kids every morning for granted.

As parents, we understand that healthy and nutritious foods are important to a child’s mental and physical development. For the most part, our children are fortunate enough to consume sufficient amounts of vitamins and nutrients through their diet.

Yet millions of children in developing countries suffer from malnutrition, their diets lacking several essential vitamins – particularly vitamin A, which is needed to promote good eye health. An estimated 190 million children under the age of five suffer from vitamin A deficiency (VAD).

VAD is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children in developing countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that up to 500,000 children go blind each year as a result of this condition. Sadly, half of those children die within 12 months of going blind.

Operation Eyesight is fighting to eliminate avoidable blindness in India, where a staggering 37 percent of the world’s vitamin A-deficient children reside. According to Government of India statistics provided to the WHO, 62 percent of all preschool-aged children in India do not get enough of the vitamin. But that figure can be reduced through the effective distribution of supplements.

The WHO recommends that children between the ages of six months and five years receive one dose of vitamin A every six months. Although the Indian government launched a supplementation program in the 1970s to implement this, program coverage has been dismal and an estimated one-third of eligible children will go unreached.

Through Operation Eyesight’s Hospital Based Community Eye Health projects in India, community health workers identify an average of 150 to 200 children per program with VAD. Health workers ensure that all children identified are referred to government service centres to receive doses of vitamin A.

In addition, Operation Eyesight works with our fellow international NGO, Vitamin Angels, to provide hospital partners with vitamin A capsules free of charge, and to reach out to remote communities where the government is not providing supplements.

Not only does vitamin A prevent childhood blindness, it also prevents repeated childhood infections, such as diarrhea, upper respiratory tract infections and post-measles infections, by improving a child’s immunity. With sufficient levels of vitamin A, a child’s survival rate increases by 24 percent.

The right vitamins and minerals can aid us in the fight to eliminate avoidable blindness and help children see a brighter future! We hope the next time you find yourself down the vitamin aisle at the drugstore or planning out your meals for the next day, you will pause and reflect on how fortunate we are to have this precious vitamin in our lives.

We are keeping our eyes on another potential solution to VAD: a genetically engineered rice that helps combat blindness and death in children. You can read more about this crop here. 

Special thanks to our colleagues at Vitamin Angels for some of the material in this article.  

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Our partner hospital, Udaygiri Lions Eye Hospital (ULEH), is located in a small town called Udgir in the Marathwada region, one of the poorest regions in India. We entered into a partnership with ULEH in 2012 to implement a Hospital-Based Community Eye Health Project in an area spread across three districts: Latur, Nanded and Parbhani.

Over the past 18 months, Operation Eyesight has provided technical support to the hospital to make needed renovations and improve the capacity of its staff. All of this has led to the delivery of quality eye care services.

One of the challenges, however, was that the hospital served such a far flung area. Patients requiring even a simple eye exam had to wait for the hospital’s medical team to conduct an eye screening program near their village. And even the few people who could afford it had to travel vast distances to access eye care services.

Thankfully, we received a grant from Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Development (DFATD) that allowed us to establish two vision centres in the Nanded and Parbhani districts. This is what brought me back; ULEH had invited me to inaugurate the vision centres, the only eye care service centres in the area.

The inauguration functions were quite different from the many that I have attended in the past. Surprisingly, the audience comprised mostly of elderly men and women. More strikingly, they had not come to listen to my inauguration speech, but to get their eyes examined!

Five hundred people showed up for the first vision centre launch, and 300 of them registered at the vision centre and had their eyes examined. They had come not only from the villages where these two vision centres are located, but from the surrounding villages as well.

Operation Eyesight provided support for the equipment and renovation of these vision centres, which were donated by the local communities. In fact, the building for the centre in Nanded was donated by a person who had previously underwent cataract surgery at ULEH.

The operating costs for the vision centres are covered by ULEH’s own resources. It is expected that each centre will examine 375 people per month, dispense close to 100 pairs of eyeglasses and refer over 100 patients to the base hospital in Udgir.

I returned home from my journey with a sense of satisfaction about the progress we are making in our fight to eliminate avoidable blindness. I am proud of the way our India team has been delivering and I am grateful for our donors and partner hospitals.

Operation Eyesight’s ability to reach out to the unreached – to provide them with high quality eye care services and build their capacity to take care of their eye health on their own – makes me confident that we truly can eliminate avoidable blindness!

Visit our Programs & Projects page to learn more about our work in India.

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The last of the sun’s rays cast over a small village near the India-Bangladesh border. Nurbhanu is finishing up her final house call of the day.

As a community health worker with Operation Eyesight’s Community-Based Eye Health Project in West Bengal, India, she is used to working late into the evening.

Tomorrow, a team from Siliguri Greater Lions Eye Hospital (SGLEH), Operation Eyesight’s partner hospital, is holding a screening program in the village. Nurbhanu’s job is to promote the screening and ensure that those identified during an earlier door-to-door survey attend.

Nurbhanu (whose name means ‘Lady of the Light’) has made a mark for herself in her community, bringing light to villages primarily inhabited by Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh.

Being from the same community and from an Orthodox family, Nurbhanu was a bit hesitant to take on the job at first. But, with her husband Mohamed’s endless encouragement, she has done tremendous work in a difficult area.

Since she began working as a community health worker two years ago, Nurbhanu has conducted more than 14 screening programs. Through these programs, she has helped more than 1,600 people receive an eye examination, 450 people undergo surgery and 320 people receive glasses.

Most of the beneficiaries have been Muslim women who now look to Nurbhanu for their family’s eye health needs.

Nurbhanu’s successes have not come without sacrifice. She spent 25 days away from home to undergo rigorous training conducted by Operation Eyesight and SGLEH staff. Most days she travels many kilometres on bicycle, comes home late and then cooks dinner for her children.

Convincing Muslim women that their children should undergo immunization, and counselling patients who are otherwise reluctant to undergo surgery has not been easy. Yet Nurbhanu continues to deliver, day after day.

Mohamed is proud of his wife and the work she is doing. “It’s painful to see those who cannot see what they have on their plate to eat,” he says. “But my wife helps those elderly to see clearly what they eat after their treatment.”

He is extremely happy to support his wife in her activities. Nurbhanu on the other hand is grateful she is able to live up to her name!

Nurbhanu plans to train to become a vision technician. Once she has finished her training, she will work in a vision centre in West Bengal, examining patients, prescribing eye glasses and bringing light to those who would otherwise go needlessly blind.

We commend Nurbhanu for her unwavering commitment to eliminating avoidable blindness, and her part in our work! You can also read about Nurbhanu’s colleague, Rama.

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