Our Global Director of Programs, Kashinath Bhoosnurmath, is an expert in eye health development. He knows how important eye health care is in the communities where we work. That’s why he and our team developed our model of sustainable eye health care, to address the many barriers facing these communities and give them access to the care they need.

Kashinath recently wrote an article for the prestigious Community Eye Health Journal about our Hospital-Based Community Eye Health Program (HBCEHP). In it, he discusses the importance of reaching people who would otherwise go unreached. Despite improvements in some of the countries we work in (better infrastructure and a growing middle class), there are still millions of people suffering from avoidable blindness.

There are many barriers to obtaining eye care in the countries where we work. Economic barriers are common for the people we help; many of them cannot afford the cost of treatment for their eye care. Also,local hospitals desperately need trained eye health care professionals and equipment to provide professional eye health care services.

Not only this, but there are other barriers you might not expect when it comes to providing communities in need with eye health care. That’s why our HBCEHP model takes into account the problems these communities face, as shown in the following excerpt from Kash’s article.

“Hospital-Based Community Eye Health Programme (HBCEHP): The model

Poor eye health-seeking behaviour usually stems from inadequate knowledge of eye diseases, harmful cultural beliefs and practices, eye problems viewed as low priority, gender discrimination, lack of affordability and poor mobility amongst the elderly. Often hospitals:

• Provide eye care services but do not empower targeted communities;
• Do not focus on the elimination of avoidable blindness; and
• Make services available free of cost, but poor patients at risk of losing their sight do not access these services.

[…] The above analyses led us to the conclusion that there were gaps in the services offered by hospitals and that greater effort was needed to empower the target communities.

Through a pilot project implemented from 2009 to 2013 in southern India, we learned that by empowering people living in the service area of the hospital and improving their eye health-seeking behaviour, while continuing to deliver quality eye care services, hospitals could significantly contribute to the elimination of avoidable blindness on a sustainable basis. This insight led us to develop and successfully scale up a model, named Hospital-Based Community Eye Health Programme (HBCEHP).”

By discovering the issues that affected communities suffering with avoidable blindness, our team built the model to include the “strengthening [of] hospitals to ensure delivery of quality services; strengthening primary health services, including primary eye care services; and empowering target communities to take ownership and responsibility for their eye health needs.”

Empowering communities to seek out professional eye health care is especially important, and that’s where community health workers come in. They are usually women who are selected from the very communities we aim to help, then they’re trained to go door-to-door to screen people for eye health issues, and to refer them for treatment or further diagnosis if necessary.

And the best part of our model is that it’s self-sustaining. By helping build capacity in the hospitals we partner with, we make it possible for them to attract patients who can afford their treatment, and these paying patients in turn help subsidize the treatment of those living in poor communities who could not afford the eye health care they need.

Even this is just an overview. If you want to learn more about the model, you can read Kashinath’s full article here.

Implementing our model is made possible by the generosity of supporters like you! There are already hundreds of communities being helped, but there are still hundreds more that do not have access to quality eye health care. Please consider becoming a monthly donor to help us reach more communities in need – For All the World to See!

The post How do you eliminate avoidable blindness on a sustainable basis? We have the answer! appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

Siroti is a 60-year-old woman who lives in a village in West Bengal, India. She lives with her husband and their extended family.

She works as a daily wage worker in a nearby tea garden, where her husband is a daily wage labourer and her son works as a carpenter. Together as a family they could afford most things they needed, and they were living a happy life.

Then one day, Siroti started to have blurred vision in both her eyes. She had no idea what was happening. After some time, she was unable to see things in the distance, and her vision was only getting worse.

Siroti began to fear for herself. “I could barely see. What would I do if I went blind and lost my job?” She worried that she would eventually become a burden to her family.

Her family also felt helpless. They had no idea how to help Siroti, and they started to fear for her as well.

But then a wonderful thing happened – Siroti’s home was visited by an Operation Eyesight-trained community health worker (CHW). It didn’t take long for the CHW to diagnose Siroti with bilateral cataract. After some counseling about cataracts and the required treatment, she was still worried about the cost.

“Not even as a family could we afford the cost of my treatment. I was so afraid that I would go blind!”

But the CHW assured her that the treatment would be free! And all thanks to the incredible generosity of people like you!

This news was like a dream come true to Siroti! And when she discussed undergoing treatment with her family, they were so happy that they lent her their wholehearted support!

Today, after her successful surgery, Siroti can see again, and she can continue her work in the tea garden.

“Thank you to everyone who thought of me and made this possible!” she says gratefully. “Thank you to the hospital and the generous people in Canada who helped me!”

There are other women like Siroti who work hard, but who need our help. Donate to our cataract surgery program today to give the gift of sight to other women like Siroti – For All The World To See!

The post All for one, and one for all! appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

In September 2015, we opened the Operation Eyesight Universal Institute for Eye Cancer in India in response to the shocking fact that every day, four children in India are born with eye cancer. Through its early detection and integrated treatments programs, the Institute has prevented hundreds of children from losing their sight to retinoblastoma, a life-threatening eye cancer almost exclusively found in young children.

Fortunately, with early diagnosis and appropriate treatment, we can save 95 percent of children suffering from retinoblastoma, and in 75 percent of cases, the child’s vision can be saved.

The Operation Eyesight Universal Institute for Eye Cancer was established at the prestigious L V Prasad Eye Institute in the city of Hyderabad, thanks to a generous contribution from a Canadian donor family. The Institute provides comprehensive treatment for the entire range of ophthalmic tumors in both children and adults, and patients who cannot afford to pay are offered treatment free of cost. Since its opening, we’ve screened nearly 40,000 people, diagnosed more than 1,700 patients with eye tumours and performed 6,445 procedures including surgeries and chemotherapy.

The Institute also offers critically required services to India and other developing countries through research, capacity-building and education programs. It has trained several ophthalmologists and optometrists as part of its fellowship program, and has published several research papers in reputable, peer-reviewed journals.

There are only a few centres around the world – and none in Asia – that specialize in this type of integrated treatment and serve as a global resource centre. We’re extremely grateful for our donors’ support in providing such a vital service to India and beyond.

In India, retinoblastoma, along with other types of eye cancer, has largely remained undetected due to lack of awareness and the limited availability of affordable eye cancer treatment. In fact, India has the highest number of new cases of eye cancer in the world and more than half of the global burden of eye cancer.

The Operation Eyesight Universal Institute for Eye Cancer will play a critical role in increasing awareness about eye cancer, leading to early diagnosis and treatment. With your continued support, we will save many more lives!

The post Helping eye cancer patients from India and around the world appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

To answer that, picture a tribal woman in a remote part of India, who is going blind from cataracts. She’s a poor woman who knows if she can’t see she can’t work; and if she can’t work, she doesn’t eat. The woman knows there is an eye clinic not too far away that can fix her eyes free of charge. But she doesn’t go.

Why not? Because she knows people with similar problems who have gone to that clinic, and came back worse than before. The woman may be poor, but she’s no fool. She would rather live with the grey fog of cataract-clouded vision than risk being permanently blinded, or in pain due to a botched surgery.

Throughout India and other countries with large populations of low income people, this scenario plays out over and over. Cataract is the main cause of avoidable blindness everywhere, affecting millions of people; yet cataracts are relatively easy and inexpensive to correct.

Many charitable eye clinics, in their efforts to restore sight to cataract sufferers, have been pushing people through the system for years. Medical teams cut corners and take chances that would be unthinkable in other countries. The emphasis on quantity (instead of quality) translates into failed surgeries. It’s still happening today. Many hospitals that offer free treatment to the poor receive their funding based on the number of people they treat, instead of how many people get healed.

In 2003, a landmark research project studied the impact of all those cataract surgeries. It confirmed that yes, cataract was the number one cause of blindness – about 50 percent of all cases. Cause number two? Failed cataract surgeries.

This news landed with a thud throughout the international eye care community. I can tell you how Operation Eyesight responded: we resolved to place quality among our top priorities. We communicated this expectation to our medical partners, and lost some who were unwilling to work towards our goals in the process. Since then, we have invested in upgrades to facilities, training, equipment and procedures. While this is still a work in progress in some regions, we are working with all of our hospital partners to achieve World Health Organization (WHO) standards in surgical outcomes – the same as in Canada, where I live.

But there’s more! Quality is not just about best practices; it’s about how we regard the people who need our help – people like that same tribal woman I mentioned earlier. Come back on June 8 when I’ll describe what we see when we look through her eyes. And learn more about our approach to quality in our Spring 2012 newsletter, “No compromise: Quality is key to achieving sustainable development.”

The post We must see through their eyes (Part 1 of 2) appeared first on Operation Eyesight.