Building Equitable and Sustainable Blindness Prevention and Sight Restoration Programs in Low-Income Countries 2017-2018

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) Improved utilization of eye care services by vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls (2) Increased capacity of eye units to provide high-quality eye care services, particularly to women and girls (3) Increased capacity of community ophthalmology programs, units and eye care centers to deliver programs in priority geographic areas (4) Key institutions have high-quality needs-based training programs in community ophthalmology (5) National government, NGOs and the private sector are aware of eye services, initiatives and community ophthalmology (6) Key institutions have developed and strengthened community ophthalmology research knowledge and productivity (7) Increased international awareness of gender inequity in eye care and strategies to overcome the barriers faced by women and girls.

In the past year, Seva Canada supported programs provided accessible eye care services to 1.5 million people, sight restoring cataract surgery to 110,000 people (53% women), glasses to over 14,000 people, and trained 4,000 community members in eye health and over 100 local ophthalmic personnel, including ophthalmologists, ophthalmic assistants and nurses. Over the project lifetime, Seva Canada has helped to (1) restore the sight of 5 million people (2) train over 100,000 medical and non-medical personnel (3) establish 32 primary eye care facilities and supported the development of 16 secondary facilities and 8 tertiary facilities (2) establish leading community ophthalmology training institutions in India, Nepal and Sub Saharan Africa (3) develop national eye health programs in Nepal, Cambodia, Tibetans Areas of China, Tanzania, Burundi, Madagascar, Malawi and Egypt (2) develop national ophthalmic nurse training programs in Nepal and Madagascar (5) publish over 30 research studies in reputable academic journals, generating population-based evidence across Asia and Africa (6) produce 2 internationally recognized publications documenting the gender inequity in the treatment of blindness and interventions to address the inequity (7) host 2 international gender and blindness meetings attended by key global health actors, practitioners and policy makers.