My recent visit to Uttarakhand, India, was an eyeopening experience, showcasing the profound impact of our projects. In January, I joined a team from our partner institute, the Vivekananda Netralaya Super Specialty Charitable Eye Hospital, during a community outreach exercise in the rugged terrain of Rudraprayag, where many villages are accessible only via steep, challenging footpaths.

What touched me most was witnessing elderly men and women blessing our community health volunteers with heartfelt wishes for good health and long life. It’s moments like these that remind us of the true essence of service – not just reaching but becoming a part of the community.

Since 2021, our team has tirelessly brought eye care to the doorsteps of those in the area. Whether braving freezing winters, scorching summers, relentless rains or storms, their commitment has never wavered.

Mountains may test our resolve, but they also teach us resilience and purpose. My sincere appreciation to the entire team for their steadfast dedication to transforming lives in these challenging conditions.

Emmanuel joined our team in India in 2021. As a Program Manager, he oversees programs in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, often joining teams in the field to check in with partners and monitor projects. He has a Master of Social Work and has been working in the development sector for 15 years. He lives in Shillong, Meghalaya with his wife and two sons.

The post Notes from the field: Reaching the heights in the Himalayas appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

38-year-old Evelyn lives in Muziyo village, about 35 kilometers south of Zambia’s Sinazongwe District. What started as itching and irritation of the eyelids turned into severe, burning pain. Before long, Evelyn couldn’t even blink without feeling intense pain, and she started to lose some of her vision.

“It was very painful for me to open my eyes, and bright sunlight only made it worse,” she explains sadly. She didn’t know what was causing her so much pain, and she feared she would lose her sight completely.

It was a very difficult time in Evelyn’s life. She couldn’t walk without someone to guide her, and she could barely open her eyes.  Sadly, Evelyn’s condition  continued on like that for five long months.

Lucky for Evelyn, an outreach screening camp organized by Operation Eyesight was held in her village.

Evelyn attended the camp, where she was screened and diagnosed with trachoma, a bacterial eye infection that causes permanent blindness if left untreated.

Evelyn was referred for trachoma surgery at the Maamba General Hospital. Finally, her suffering came to an end.

Today, Evelyn can open her eyes without experiencing any pain, and her remaining vision has been preserved.

Trachoma affects women and children most, as children will touch their faces with dirty hands, and mothers will develop the infection through contact with their kids. Unfortunately, women don’t usually access eye care services with the same frequency as men. In many cultures, women’s health isn’t seen as a priority, and other barriers, such as low income or distance to a health centre, prevent women from seeking help. But thanks to you, Evelyn and the other women of Muziyo received the care they needed!

“I’m really so grateful for all the help I received,” Evelyn says smiling. She’s happy that her treatment was provided free of cost, all thanks to our generous donors!

There are still millions of women like Evelyn who need your help. Make a donation today and give the gift of sight!

The post You’re bringing precious eye care to the women of Zambia! appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

Our Kenya programs created a tremendous impact in 2016, especially those benefitting children. Together with Seeing is Believing (SiB) and other organizations, we continued an innovative Child Eye Health project to reduce avoidable blindness and visual impairment in children. In 2016, we focused on service delivery, clinical assessment, field monitoring, advocacy and sustainability. We screened over 67,000 children for eye health problems and treated more than 3,000 children. We also assisted with ophthalmic clinical officer assessments and participated in advocacy meetings with educators. With targets and sustainability strategies now in place, the Child Eye Health project was handed over to the ministries of health and education, who will provide continuous eye care services for children.

Thanks to our GivingTuesday 2015 donors, we screened nearly 20,000 students from over 40 different schools in Narok County in 2016. Over 500 students were treated for various eye conditions. Teachers and ophthalmic clinical officers also educated students on eye health and sanitation.

With our partners, we scaled up the PEEK school screening program in Trans Nzoia County. PEEK (Portable Eye Examination Kit) is an application enabling teachers to screen students for vision problems using a mobile phone. Thanks to funding through SiB, we implemented the PEEK system at Kitale Eye Unit and two satellite clinics, and provided refresher training for teachers who had been part of our pilot project the previous year. In 2016, over 40,000 students were screened across 70 schools, and nearly 870 of the children were treated for various eye health issues.

With support from SiB, we continued to strengthen our community outreach programs in the former Rift Valley Province. In 2016, over 100,000 patients were screened for eye problems. In collaboration with the county government, we established a new eye unit at Huruma Sub-County Hospital. We also supported training for three ophthalmic nurses and one cataract surgeon.

And finally, with support from The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, we continued implementing the SAFE strategy to eliminate the blinding eye disease trachoma. Working with Narok County Referral Hospital, we trained 121 community health workers as Trachomatous Trichiasis (TT) case finders to help identify those suffering from the late stage of the disease, refer people for surgery and follow up with patients. Over 41,000 people were screened for TT, of which 358 were identified and 273 received surgeries. We also educated 15 school communities on sanitation and eye health, and trained 30 community health volunteers to facilitate Community-Led Total Sanitation programs. This resulted in the construction of 11 new latrines, increasing latrine coverage by 24 percent in the targeted communities.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? Just how much good we can do together? So much work has already been done, but there’s still a lot more to do! To help us continue our work in Kenya, please consider making a gift through our Gift Guide. No gift is too small! Together we can eliminate avoidable blindness – For All the World to See!

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Remember taking Flintstones Complete vitamins as a kid? And I’m sure you’ve seen those princess and superhero vitamin gummies you can buy for children nowadays.

We Canadians have convenient access to inexpensive multivitamins; it can be easy to take those gummies or capsules we give our kids every morning for granted.

As parents, we understand that healthy and nutritious foods are important to a child’s mental and physical development. For the most part, our children are fortunate enough to consume sufficient amounts of vitamins and nutrients through their diet.

Yet millions of children in developing countries suffer from malnutrition, their diets lacking several essential vitamins – particularly vitamin A, which is needed to promote good eye health. An estimated 190 million children under the age of five suffer from vitamin A deficiency (VAD).

VAD is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children in developing countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that up to 500,000 children go blind each year as a result of this condition. Sadly, half of those children die within 12 months of going blind.

Operation Eyesight is fighting to eliminate avoidable blindness in India, where a staggering 37 percent of the world’s vitamin A-deficient children reside. According to Government of India statistics provided to the WHO, 62 percent of all preschool-aged children in India do not get enough of the vitamin. But that figure can be reduced through the effective distribution of supplements.

The WHO recommends that children between the ages of six months and five years receive one dose of vitamin A every six months. Although the Indian government launched a supplementation program in the 1970s to implement this, program coverage has been dismal and an estimated one-third of eligible children will go unreached.

Through Operation Eyesight’s Hospital Based Community Eye Health projects in India, community health workers identify an average of 150 to 200 children per program with VAD. Health workers ensure that all children identified are referred to government service centres to receive doses of vitamin A.

In addition, Operation Eyesight works with our fellow international NGO, Vitamin Angels, to provide hospital partners with vitamin A capsules free of charge, and to reach out to remote communities where the government is not providing supplements.

Not only does vitamin A prevent childhood blindness, it also prevents repeated childhood infections, such as diarrhea, upper respiratory tract infections and post-measles infections, by improving a child’s immunity. With sufficient levels of vitamin A, a child’s survival rate increases by 24 percent.

The right vitamins and minerals can aid us in the fight to eliminate avoidable blindness and help children see a brighter future! We hope the next time you find yourself down the vitamin aisle at the drugstore or planning out your meals for the next day, you will pause and reflect on how fortunate we are to have this precious vitamin in our lives.

We are keeping our eyes on another potential solution to VAD: a genetically engineered rice that helps combat blindness and death in children. You can read more about this crop here. 

Special thanks to our colleagues at Vitamin Angels for some of the material in this article.  

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