The clinic was inaugurated in December with music, dance and speeches. We supported the construction of the building and provided ophthalmic equipment and furnishings, all made possible by the generosity of donors like you.

Zambia Country Director Phiri Kennedy says, “This is a proud moment for Operation Eyesight. We will continue to support the government through this and many other interventions, to take services closer to the people and prevent avoidable vision loss. We urge the community in Kafue Gorge to fully utilize this service to prevent people from losing sight unnecessarily.”

The clinic now offers a variety of services, from comprehensive eye exams to surgical services and referrals.

The OneSight EssilorLuxottica Foundation, our longstanding partner, is supporting the project by equipping the optical shop to dispense eyeglasses.

Beyond the 16,000 people directly served by the clinic, there are another 15 health centres that refer patients to Kafue Gorge Hospital, meaning our investment in this new eye clinic will benefit thousands more people – and their families – in the surrounding districts.

Learn more about our work in Zambia.

The post New eye clinic in Chikankata, Zambia appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

World Prematurity Day: Dr. Ashi Khurana, Vice-Chairman, C.L. Gupta Eye Institute on preventing blindness in premature babies

An eye condition that is all but invisible to parents, pediatricians and the community can silently rob premature and low-weight infants of their sight. The condition must be treated early or the infant can go blind, not as a baby, but years later as a child. The condition is called Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), and in 2016, it became all too visible to eye doctors at C. L. Gupta Eye Institute.

Dr. Khurana remembers a doctor coming to her and being “very concerned as they found that a lot of children were coming in and had gone blind due to ROP.” It was a major problem that no other organization was addressing. ROP can be treated but it requires screening, diagnosis and urgent treatment that can include injections and laser eye surgery.

However, there was no widespread public health initiative to address ROP. Dr. Khurana and her team saw the shadow that blindness from ROP caused on children, their families, the health care system and society. Though a small number of babies develop ROP and lose their sight, “there is a huge impact on the life of that child and their family because someone, often the mother, becomes the caregiver.” There is a direct impact on the mental, physical and financial resources in a family, she says. Later treatment is also often complex, intensive and has poor outcomes. “It is very frustrating as a doctor,” says Dr. Khurana, “when there is not much you can do for a condition that could have been prevented.”

Conditions impacting premature infants, such as ROP, are on the rise

Premature births are a global issue. The World Health Organization data from 2020 estimates that 13.4 million babies, or one in 10, were born premature.

India has the highest prevalence of premature births in the world. Data from the Lancet found that three million premature babies were born in India in 2020.

The emergence of local NICUs has greatly increased the survival rate of premature infants. This has led to a shift from survival to quality of life by addressing the complications of prematurity. “ROP is a modern disease as more babies survive due to high quality NICUs,” Dr. Khurana says.

Conditions of Premature Infants on the Rise

To address the growing need and fill the gap in service, Dr. Khurana and her team launched an ROP screening program in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. Initially it was a pilot and then it expanded to include a partnership with Operation Eyesight Universal and was called the Retinopathy of Prematurity Eradication Project.  

On a mission to raise awareness and start screening for ROP

At that time, Dr. Khurana remembers that C. L. Gupta Eye Institute was not getting a lot of referrals from pediatricians to screen the eyes of premature infants for ROP. She knew that they needed to start an awareness campaign to educate doctors and pediatricians about ROP and the need to screen. “It should just happen, like a vaccine,” Dr. Khurana says.

The team started knocking on doors and going into NICUs to talk to not only doctors but also NICU managers and nurses, who are often the ones responsible for requesting ROP screenings.

Screening requires specialists and equipment often found in an eye hospital. As premature infants cannot travel and spend their first few weeks in emerging NICUs, the screening needs to take place there. However, many of the infants are fighting for their lives. “They have a lot of complications and there is a lot of priorities for doctors and stress for families,” Dr. Khurana says. “And then with all that, this issue of blindness comes up.”

There are also a limited number of eye doctors, and it can be challenging for them to travel to multiple NICUs to screen premature infants “who may or may not have an eye problem.”

An ambitious screening goal

The initial goal was to screen 500 children “which was huge,” Dr, Khurana says. To achieve this they sent optometrists to screen premature infants for ROP regularly at 40 local NICUs. Infants with ROP were referred to C. L. Gupta Eye Institute for urgent treatment.

In the first phase, the team screened 464 premature infants and saved 50 children from blindness. “It has been very satisfying for our doctors,” Dr. Khurana says.

In addition to raising awareness among medical staff, Dr. Khurana’s team started to educate the community as well. Not all parents are able to understand why screening and treatment are needed. There can be literacy and poverty issues that need to be addressed and at times, parents may deny treatment. Gender can be a factor as can birth order, if there are many children in the family.

People who can pay do, those who can pay part of the cost contribute what they can and those who cannot pay are supported by Operation Eyesight Universal. In this way, “everyone receives care and treatment.”

The second phase of the project launched on July 16, 2024, expanding beyond Moradabad to Sambhal, Bijnor, Amroha, Rampur and Baduan. Reaching these semi-urban areas was possible due to a mobile van with the required equipment, made possible through the Rotary Foundation, for onsite screening and treatment in rural and underserved areas, a tele-ophthalmology platform that allows experts to provide remote consultations, diagnoses, and treatment recommendations, an expanded network of neo-natal intensive care units in the five new regions and continued medical education to raise awareness of ROP, capacity and skills of NICU staff in the additional districts.

In December 2024, the Retinopathy of Prematurity Eradication Project ends. Services will be maintained with C. L. Gupta Eye Institute, a non-profit, covering costs for those who cannot pay, and working with NICUs.

ROP is a modern disease that requires resources

ROP is being studied and the ROP Society of India is looking at the impact of the condition on the country. As more NICUs emerge and more premature infants survive, ROP is appearing more frequently.   

Now, Dr. Khurana and her team are working to raise awareness of ROP in the community, among parents and with medical professionals. What is needed is more resources, public health support and training for doctors.  

For now, her team is small but dedicated. “It is satisfying for us to make a difference in the lives of these children and families,” she says.  

For the premature infants and their families in and around Moradabad, there is hope of a bright future. 

See how this this project works in the video Born Too Soon: Retinopathy of Prematurity Project, Moradabad, India.

Read about how this project transformed the life of Baby Aarsh and his family.

The post Preventing blindness in premature babies with Dr. Ashi Khurana appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

The focus on child eye health highlighted the impact of vision on education and future livelihoods. Vision issues impact education significantly, new research from the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness shows. The research states that children with poor vision learn half of what those with good vision do, while correcting a child’s vision at school increases their lifelong earnings by up to 78 per cent.

Not only did our team ramp up eye screenings in our school health programs, our country teams also engaged in community health care, hospital strengthening, integration of eye health care in primary health care, and advocacy at the national and local levels by attending meetings and press events.

See photos from initiatives held in honour of World Sight Day below!

Meeting Eye Health Care Needs of Children Outside of School

We used the lead up to World Sight Day to highlight not only school eye health programs but also programs that reach all children. Through our community health care model, we reach the entire family through door-to-door surveys and eye screenings. Those with sight issues are referred to local vision centres or hospitals for further care. When all cases of avoidable vision loss are addressed, and ongoing eye health care is in place, villages are declared as being avoidable blindness-free. In September on Aahotguri River Island in Majuli District, Assam, India, 20 villages received this declaration. See our work in this region in this video.

Through hospital strengthening and integration of eye health care into primary health care, we worked to support premature infants, who are at high risk of Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), a leading cause of blindness in children. When ROP is detected and treated early, it can prevent lifelong blindness. In September, in Bijnor District, India, our partner C. L. Gupta Eye Institute trained 35 neonatal intensive care staff to address ROP.

Advocating for Eye Health Care

We also used World Sight Day as an opportunity to advocate for universal health care that incorporates eye health care. To do this, our teams attended 15 meetings with partners, policy makers and local and national governments. Staff also attended press briefings.

Eye Health Ambassadors

Eye health care ambassadors donned #LoveYourEyes glasses and posted eye health awareness messages online. The ambassadors included students at screenings, our President and CEO Kashinath Bhoosnurmath, staff, kids, pets, post-secondary and high school students and even Calgary, Alberta, Canada Mayor Jyoti Gondek. We are grateful for their support in raising awareness of child eye health and Operation Eyesight.

Learn more about how you can support child eye health here.

The post World Sight Day 2024 – Child Eye Health appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

In countries where eye health care is difficult to access, a simple eye condition like myopia (nearsightedness) can cause a student to fall behind and even drop out of school, which in turn could affect the child’s income for the rest of his or her life.

Ensuring that Quality Education is available to all children is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda. We’re working towards this goal by ensuring that more children get the eye health care they need to thrive at school and take charge of their education.

The link between vision loss and school enrollment and performance

According to a survey by the World Bank, children with visual impairments in sub-Saharan Africa are five percentage points less likely to ever be enrolled in school or to complete primary school. They are six percentage points less likely to be literate.¹

The links between academic performance and visual impairment can be harder to draw given the complexity of the issue, but one survey from francophone countries in Africa found that primary school students – who self-reported difficulties with their vision – performed worse on standardized tests in math and reading in all but one of the 10 participating countries.² Similarly, a Stanford study of 20,000 fourth and fifth graders in rural China found that eyeglasses boosted the standardized test scores by 18 per cent over six months.³

Even studies from higher income countries, where children have better access to eye health care, show that students with poor vision tend to read more slowly than their peers and are more likely to report that they don’t like reading.⁴ Visual fatigue is a likely culprit for both, and the resulting headaches and tiredness that these kids experience are also thought to play a role in behavioral issues at school.

The magnitude of the problem

Roughly 22.16 million children ages 14 and under have Moderate to Severe Vision Impairment (MSVI) and 44.6 million have mild vision impairment, according to a panel of global health professionals called the Vision Loss Expert Group.⁵

Only 20-50 per cent of the children who need prescription eyeglasses worldwide actually own a pair.⁶ Often, this is due to a lack of access to eye health care. In rural, remote or underserved communities, especially in low- and middle-income countries, many kids don’t get regular eye exams or have access to prescription eyeglasses and other treatment. This could be due to financial constraints, lack of education about the importance of eye health, or simply because there aren’t any optometry clinics nearby.

Across lower-income communities, schools may also lack electricity or lighting, making it even more difficult for a student with vision impairment to read information written on a blackboard. Lack of adequate lighting at home can also cause difficulties in completing homework. For a secondary student who is already falling behind in class, not being able to finish homework in a timely manner could end their school career, and cause them to drop out early.

The struggle students face

Isaac Baffoe, who manages our school eye health programs in Ghana, says one student’s story really stuck with him. The girl reported that her eyesight started to fade when she was about 12 years old, and by age 15 she had severe vision impairment. For years, she relied on a classmate to read the blackboard out loud to her during class. Isaac often wonders what would have happened to her if her friend hadn’t been so helpful, or even more importantly, if our school eye health program hadn’t reached her school and she hadn’t gotten prescription eyeglasses.

Our field staff hear a lot about the difficulties that students face before they get eyeglasses. One student in Ethiopia reported that she and her friend were frequently scolded when the friend read the blackboard notes aloud to her. Others reported that their grades dropped sharply, or that they lost interest in their studies. Many children say that they asked their parents to take them to the eye doctor, but due to tight finances or difficulty in reaching a clinic, they weren’t able to get the eye care they needed.

The good news is that, with your ongoing support, we are changing all of this – one school and one child at a time.

Delivering eye care in the classroom

Part of our goal at Operation Eyesight is to reach every single member of a community with eye health care, ensuring that nobody gets left behind. Increasingly, we’re screening school-aged children for eye issues right in the classroom.

In 2023 alone, our school eye health programs helped us screen more than 240,000 students in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nepal and Zambia.

In Kenya, we’ve partnered with the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Child Blindness Program and Peek Vision to deliver an innovative program where teachers are trained to do the initial eye health screenings using a simple smartphone app. This allows us to screen more students overall, while still providing referrals to those children identified with eye problems to get a complete eye exam with a healthcare professional.

In Ghana, we train community health nurses to help deliver our school eye health programs, also in partnership with USAID and with funding from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Latter-day Saints Charities. In addition to conducting school eye health screenings, the nurses provide the students with eye health education sessions, where they learn how to prevent eye injuries and infections and learn about various conditions, like refractive errors (the need for eyeglasses). By making sure children have basic eye health information and know where to go for subsidized eye care, whole families are made aware of the services that are available to them.

Isaac, who has been on hand during several of these school screening events, says the children are always very eager to get involved. “The children show lots of interest. They want to participate,” he explains. “During all the screenings we’ve attended to audit, the children are very cooperative, they really want to know what is going on.”

He adds that it’s not just the students who are happy with getting a pair of eyeglasses.

“It’s not only a relief to the children, but also to the teachers,” he says, “because it also made their work difficult to spend extra time with these children who were struggling with their studies prior to receiving eyeglasses.”

More girls in school thanks to clean water closer to home

In November 2020, the borehole in the Zambian village of Kangwa broke down. The COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing, and the need for clean water was more urgent than ever. For Natasha, a teenager who was in high school at the time, the breakdown had devastating consequences. As the family member tasked with fetching water, Natasha now had to walk several kilometres each day to complete the chore, meaning she could no longer attend school. She wasn’t alone – other teenage girls in her community were in the same situation.

When our team in Zambia found out about the broken borehole, they sprang into action and quickly got it fixed. They were well equipped to do so, because we have been working with communities to repair and drill boreholes for many years to curb the spread of trachoma.

Trachoma is a bacterial eye infection that’s common in areas with water shortages and crowded living conditions. The bacteria spreads easily through contact with eye discharge from infected people on hands and clothing, and also through direct transmission by flies. If left untreated, it can cause severe pain, vision loss and even blindness. In fact, it is the leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide.

When we work with communities in areas of Zambia, Ethiopia and Kenya where trachoma is endemic, we ensure that water and sanitation issues are part of our intervention. In communities like Kangwa, this means training local volunteer teams to help maintain and repair broken boreholes, and training community WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) teams to educate their neighbours about preventing trachoma transmission in the home.

In order to ensure that girls have equal access to quality education, clean water and sanitation facilities must be part of the solution. (Watch this video to learn more about the ripple effects of clean water.)

Myopia on the rise

Myopia (nearsightedness) rates are on the rise all over the world. In 2020, the global prevalence was 30 per cent. It’s estimated to rise to 50 per cent by 2050.⁷

In China, where the rise in myopia in children is being described as an epidemic, the government has rolled out a nation-wide strategy to curb the growth, which includes school-based eye screenings, public health education campaigns, a reduction in homework and an increase in time spent outdoors.⁸

As suggested by China’s strategies, many of the factors contributing to the rise of myopia are likely due to modern lifestyles: more time spent indoors, doing near-work like homework, and more time spent parked in front of digital devices.

But there may be more at play in the phenomenon, including environmental risks like increasing urbanization and changing diets. As low- to middle-income countries become more urbanized and educational pressures mount, children everywhere are at increased risk of developing the refractive error. In parts of Africa and Asia where families already face difficulties accessing eye health care, the gap between eye health services and those in need of treatment will continue to grow.

Our commitment to eliminating avoidable vision loss in children

As part of our 2024-2028 Global Strategy, we are committed to providing eye health care and clean water to more children so that they can take full advantage of any educational opportunities they are presented with. This means integrating WASH projects with school eye health projects and rolling out more school eye health programs across our countries of work.

We have already seen much success with our school eye health programs in countries like Kenya and Ghana, where we’re working with the local ministries of health and education. Now, it’s time to scale our efforts to more schools, more districts and more countries. With your ongoing support, we can expand our reach and improve the quality of life for more kids around the world.

Donate today and help us restore sight and prevent blindness for more children. The Gift of Sight is the gift of education and the gift of opportunity. Thank you for your support!

1. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/964201621218582928/pdf/The-Price-of-Exclusion-Disability-and-Education-Looking-Ahead-Visual-Impairment-and-School-Eye-Health-Programs.pdf ↩︎
2. https://www.unicef.org/congo/media/561/file/PASEC%202014.pdf ↩︎
3. https://fse.fsi.stanford.edu/news/eyeglasses_boost_test_scores_in_rural_china_20140311 ↩︎
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10641537/ ↩︎
5. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30488-5/fulltext ↩︎
6. https://www.iapb.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2016-Situational-Analysis-Full-Report_LR-1.pdf
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7. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6065(23)00155-4/fulltext ↩︎
8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10912377/ ↩︎

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