Studies have shown that the economic return from $1 invested in building sustainable eye care systems to combat poverty-driven blindness is $3.56 in Kenya, $3.16 in poor regions of China and $6 in Pakistan. These figures do not include the social return: without treatment, children like Fatima would face a lifetime of being disenfranchised from education and life events.
To retrench from providing aid to developing countries would be an expedient reaction amidst the fallout from a global pandemic. We must instead be smarter about how and where aid is spent.