In Canada, as we have seen around the world, the mitigation efforts in confronting COVID-19 are focused on the behaviours of the individual, the family and the community. Prevention is essential and community empowerment is vital.

The lessons from the Ebola epidemic in West Africa document the key role the community played in stopping the disease. Defeating COVID-19 requires leveraging and unleashing the power of community action to implement prevention measures and to strengthen hygiene. Empowering the community to take action explicitly aimed at behaviour change will minimize the spread of COVID-19.

Operation Eyesight will ensure clear guidance on risk, prevention and awareness of symptoms are available to the communities where we work and to the broader community.

Operation Eyesight works with the local government and partner hospitals in Sub Saharan Africa where our eye health initiatives have been implemented and with partner hospitals in India, Nepal and Bangladesh to try to get in front of the crisis and help ‘flatten the curve’.

During this crisis, Operation Eyesight, building on our strong local partnerships and community based programming, will focus on:

• Responding accordingly to heightened challenges to women and girls in developing countries during the pandemic when females are designated as the primary caregiver;
• Providing clean water and promoting safe hygiene and sanitation, including access to water supplies, hand washing stations, hygiene kits etc.
• Working to ensure adequate essential supplies like soap, disinfectants, and medications to treat infectious eye diseases that irritate the eyes such as trachoma continue to be available;
• Educating and empowering front line health workers and Community Health Workers (mostly women) on infection, prevention and control measures
• Facilitating the distribution of COVID-19 educational materials to keep our vulnerable communities informed.

The window of opportunity is closing. Help us help the communities that you have supported for eye health to meet the challenges of COVID-19.

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The post The Time is Now and Community Empowerment is Key appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

Blindness is a gender issue. Blindness discriminates. Fifty-five per cent of the world’s blind are women and girls. More than 20 million women and girls are blind, and 120 million are visually impaired. Four out of five people who are blind don’t need to be.

And this injustice is magnified in developing countries. Women face additional barriers to accessing eye care that men don’t: lack of education, limited decision-making power, restricted access to financial resources and a lower perceived priority.

One reason for the disparity is that women live longer than men, so they are more likely to develop age-related, non-communicable eye diseases such as cataract, glaucoma and macular degeneration. But despite the fact that more women than men are affected by the condition, cataract surgery rates are lower for women.

And this is only part of the picture.

Women and girls are at greater risk of contracting trachoma, an infectious eye disease that leads to irreversible blindness. Seventy per cent of those affected by blinding trachoma are women. Very young children are at risk for trachoma, and three times as many girls as boys suffer from it.

Women and girls are at increased risk for infectious eye diseases because of their traditional roles. Women and girls carry the burden of taking care of their relatives who suffer from trachoma or other eye conditions. Not only does this increase their risk of contracting trachoma themselves, but it often limits their opportunities to go to school or find employment.

Women who are blind carry the double burden of discrimination because of their disability and their gender, which can lead to social exclusion. This impacts their ability to do day-to-day activities, increases their risk of injury, and leaves them more vulnerable to violence and depression.

To achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the World Health Organization’s VISION 2020 goals, eye care programs must eliminate all forms of inequity in access to eye care for women and girls. Eye care programs must recognize that women and girls have different needs, preferences and constraints, and women and girls should be at the centre of eye health programming.

Organizations must work with local communities to understand the barriers women face, take affirmative action in training and human resource development to ensure there are more women in the health care system, and remove the barriers to access to services. In addition, programs should integrate eye health services into maternal and reproductive health facilities to give pregnant women access to eye health screening that is not provided routinely, and provide outreach to villages where eye disease remains largely undiagnosed and untreated.

Operation Eyesight works with local hospital and government partners to provide quality eye care services to everyone – regardless of gender, age, ability to pay or other personal circumstances – while working to address the many root causes of avoidable blindness and remove barriers to health care, specifically and deliberately targeting the barriers for women and girls.

I’m especially proud of our focus on community outreach and education. We train community health workers – women who live and work in our target communities – to conduct door-to-door eye screenings and educate families about eye health and general health topics such as prenatal care, nutrition and immunization. This approach allows us to reach women and girls who might otherwise go unreached, ensuring those with eye health issues are referred to a partner hospital or vision centre for treatment.

Community health workers also refer women and their families to primary health care facilities for pre/postnatal care, vitamin A supplementation, immunizations, etc. These are just a few examples of how we’re embedding SDG 5: Gender Equality into our everyday work.

Stats on blindness and women retrieved from the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, Seva Canada, this article in BMJ Open Ophthalmology and this article in Ophthalmic Epidemiology.

A variation of this article was previously published on CCIC’s website for Gender Equality Week.

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