Moving full steam ahead, The Rift Valley Prevention of Blindness Project started its fourth and final year. Supported by our partner Standard Chartered Bank’s Seeing is Believing, our impact was strong. We’ve treated 60,706 people for various eye conditions so far.

Our Kenya Trachoma Elimination Project, supported by our partner Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust was wildly successful last year. In fact, the active search for TT (trachomatous trichiasis) patients was halted mid-2017 because the number of patients with TT decreased. We’re making progress!

This is partly due to our mass distributions of antibiotics. After another distribution, 2017 brought us within blinking distance of achieving our goal of less than one person with TT in a population of 1,000. An impact assessment will be conducted in 2018.

Eliminating trachoma through SAFE:

A World Health Organization strategy to educate people on improved sanitation habits that help reduce serious illness and trachoma (eye infection).

The project is based in Narok County where active trachoma is high. In 2017 we introduced face washing and hygiene education into 15 schools. Each student received a face-washing kit.

Our trained community health workers educated people in the villages where the schools are located on the importance of facial cleanliness and good hygiene. Particular focus was given to mothers of children under nine.

In addition to facial cleanliness, we held open forums on environmental improvement. These forums encourage villagers to take responsibility for their community sanitation. Empowered through education, we saw various communities initiate the building of 101 latrines in 2017. With each latrine, washing stations are built at various points along the structures.

Supported by Standard Chartered Bank’s Seeing is Believing initiative, mid2017 saw the start of our Kirinyaga Community Eye Health Project. With our partner Kerugoya County Referral Hospital we targeted 150 villages to educate community members on the importance of eye health care.

Thanks to our donors and partners, Kenya had a tremendous year.

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To maintain the new pumps at each well, we trained 33 community area pump minders. These pump minders also helped rehabilitate three broken boreholes.

We also helped supply tool kits to facilitate the area pump minders in servicing and maintaining the community boreholes. Thanks to you, training people in the community to maintain their wells empowers them to change and improve their sanitation habits.

Along with drilling wells, we implemented the face washing phase of SAFE. Thanks to our donors, we held education sessions teaching improved sanitation habits to help reduce serious illness and trachoma.

Equally exciting, in partnership with the Maamba General Hospital last year, we implemented our eye health care model. Under this model and with donor support, we’ll renovate some spaces to help the hospital deliver more effective eye health care. Since our partnership began we’ve supported 124 eye care surgeries.

Partnerships contribute to our success. Along with our donors, our partner Standard Chartered Bank’s Seeing is Believing has supported our community health workers who conduct door-to-door surveys. Working in three compounds in Lusaka, these workers will reach a total population of 622,034 by the end of the survey.

We also established three primary eye clinics in each compound and have seen an increase in referrals. With your investment, we’ve seen an increase in surgeries performed by our partner University Teaching Hospital. The hospital holds a surgery clinic once a week. Among other eye surgeries, the clinic averages six cataract surgeries during those clinic days.

Together, we’re reaching remote communities and making quality eye care accessible for everyone.

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In Ghana

We implemented our eye health care model for the first time in Mfantseman Municipal District in Ghana’s Central Region last fall. So far, we’ve completed door-to-door eye health surveys in 20 communities in the Abeadze Dominase Sub-District.

We also launched the Ophthalmic Nursing School Project. Working with Standard Chartered Bank, this project promises to strengthen ophthalmic nursing in Ghana. The program will launch at Ghana’s only Ophthalmic Nursing School in Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra. We aim to elevate the nursing training program from diploma to degree level.

With our partners we’ll develop a new nursing curriculum. The project will establish links between three ophthalmic nursing schools in Ghana and the United Kingdom. Thanks to our donor investment this project promises to increase the quality of eye care in the country.

We’re also pleased to announce the successful completion of another project with partner Standard Chartered Bank. The five-year project spanned 35 districts over 10 regions in Ghana, and included 35 district hospitals.

During this project, we equipped 18 partner hospitals with eye care equipment. Our project awareness campaigns covered 75 percent of the area’s population. We achieved an outstanding 300 percent increase of patients accessing and receiving eye care.

Thank you, you’ve helped us make real progress in eliminating avoidable blindness.

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Declaring villages avoidable blindness-free is the pinnacle of our work. We’re ecstatic to say that we declared our 500th village free of avoidable blindness in 2017.

With the help of our partner Gerald A. Cooper-Key Foundation we declared 11 of those villages avoidable blindness-free. In fact, the Director General of Health Services of the Indian government recognized our work in reaching remote areas.

Gerald A. Cooper-Key Foundation also supported more than 500 eye surgeries.

Successful partnerships contribute to our accomplishments. Standard Chartered Bank’s Seeing is Believing supported us in establishing 12 new Vision Centres. With their help we passed another landmark when we opened our 100th Vision Centre. We’re delighted to report that by the end of the year we’d opened 108 Vision Centres.

We’re also grateful for the continued support from Bharat Financial Inclusion. Thanks to their generosity we performed more than 5,000 cataract surgeries in eight Indian states.

On the technology front, our partnership with Pellucid Inc, a Singapore based eye tech firm, is thriving. With Pellucid technology:

• 60 Vision Centres are reporting online.
• 30 tablets are using a tracking application to cover household surveys for 750,000 people.

We continue to be recognized as eye health care experts. Last year Operation Eyesight’s Dr. Santosh Moses, Regional Manager for South Asia was elected Vice President to the Executive Committee of VISION 2020 India. Also, Operation Eyesight was nominated to the Universal Eye Health Committee of the Government of Odisha.

And for fun, our Indian team marathoners ran in the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon. Raising an impressive $11,000, Operation Eyesight was recognized as an official charity for the marathon. The fun’raising was the easy part and our team did the hard part — running distances ranging between 10 and 42.2 km. Remarkable!

In addition, we expanded our Community-Based Diabetic Retinopathy project to two new cities last year — Udgir, Maharashtra and Udaipur, Rajasthan.

Thanks to our amazing donors India had a dynamic year!

Thanks to Gerald A. Cooper-Key Foundation and the Koehle Family Trust, these Vision Centres are permanent facilities. Each Vision Centre is now financially self-sustaining and provides eye care services in areas where none existed. Also, with Gerald A. Cooper-Key Foundation support, we’re proud to announce the inauguration of the upgraded out-patient department at Fateh-Bal Eye Hospital last year.

We’re just getting started in Nepal, and our future in the country promises to give new-found hope and freedom to thousands of people.

We couldn’t do it without our loyal donors. Thank you!

Our momentum continues in Nepal as we move into our second year working in the county. With great support from our donors and partners, we trained 14 new eye health care staff. Working with Nepal Eye Hospital and Fateh-Bal Eye Hospital we established three new Vision Centres linked to these hospitals.

Thank you for making 2017 another fantastic year!

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