Resources

Comprehensive Child Eye Health in Nigeria (CCEHiN) is a three-year (2017-2020) Seeing is Believing (SiB) programme that seeks to make comprehensive child eye health services available and accessible through promotion, prevention, medical care and rehabilitation / inclusive education targeted at vulnerable children. The SiB programme is being implemented in eleven (11) States of the federation divided into four clusters as follows: Cluster 1: Oyo, Ogun and Osun States, Cluster 2: the Federal Capital Territory, Nasarawa and Plateau States, Cluster 3: Kano, Katsina and Jigawa States, and Cluster 4: Cross River and Akwa Ibom States. The Seeing is Believing programme kicked off in December 2017 and would be concluded in December 2019. A mid-term evaluation was conducted in May 2019 to discern the major challenges and progress made by the SiB programme mid-way into implementation.

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Glaucoma is the third leading cause of blindness in the world, after cataract, and it causes irreversible vision loss, in contrast to cataract which is reversible. The most frequent variants of the disease are open angle and angle-closure glaucoma, with open angle glaucoma being the most common in Latin America. The risk of blindness depends on various factors, including the level of intraocular pressure; direct family history of glaucoma; age at onset; the severity and rapidity of disease progression; and appropriate and timely treatment.1 Primary open angle glaucoma is a chronic and progressive disease, and thus we must ensure timely diagnosis by identifying individuals in the community with risk factors and undertaking examinations which either confirm or rule out the disease, while considering that mass population screening is not recommended. When a diagnosis is confirmed, ongoing periodic examinations and appropriate case management must be ensured in order to prevent vision loss.

The aim in creating this guide is to provide an overview of the current situation in Latin America with regard to glaucoma, the prevalence of which has increased in tandem with the life expectancy of the population, as well as to provide an orientation for the general ophthalmologist regarding its diagnosis and management.

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A pilot project “A Comprehensive Rural Eye Care Model (CRECM) in Yunnan Province-increasing access for disadvantaged groups to universal eye care” which was launched by Fred Hollows Foundation (The Foundation) in April 2016 will be finished in March 2019. The total budget of the project is 1,195,160 USD. The project addresses 3 main causes of avoidable blindness, cataract, RE and DR in a comprehensive way which is strictly in line with the National Prevention of Blindness Plan and The Foundation’s Strategy. The objectives of the project include: to strengthen the capacity of public health personnel to deliver quality, sustainable, comprehensive eye-care services; to increase the availability and accessibility of integrated eye care services within the existing health system in pilot locations; to generate data & evidence to inform eye health planning, improve quality of interventions and document the CRECM; and to strengthen provincial prevention of blindness, hospital management and civil society to advocate for policy development and replication of the CRECM in Yunnan and other provinces in China.

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WHO Afro has released the Core competencies for the Eye Health Workforce in the WHO African region. This policy document is a step towards improvement of the quality of eye health care. It describes the development of core competencies for the cadres that constitute the professional eye health team.

In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 3.6 million persons are blind, 17.4 million have moderate and severe visual impairment, and 100 million have near vision impairment. Visual impairment does not only impact negatively a person’s quality of life but also the national and regional economy. The majority of people who are visually impaired are over 50 years old and many live in rural areas. This places a huge burden on the WHO African Region that already has a myriad of challenges compounding this shortage of skilled eye health providers. What is worse, the distribution of available eye health providers is skewed, with most of them deployed in the urban areas.

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