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.

In Kenya, Operation Eyesight has been fighting the terrible trachoma infection for many years with antibiotics and surgery. But despite our best efforts, this eye disease just wasn’t going away.

We decided that if trachoma was to be beaten we had to deal with the root problem of personal hygiene, which can only happen with a reliable source of clean water. In Kenya, that means deep water wells, which led us to Ongata Naado.

I remember first visiting this village in 2006. It is located on a vast prairie region of Kenya where the Maasai people live. The village wasn’t much to look at because these nomadic people don’t stay in one place for long.  It was dry and wind-blown with a ramshackle school that held only 20 students.

Every Tuesday the teacher would shut down the school and ride his bike for 20 km to get 27 litres of water that would last him and the children a week. Families would also forage afar to find water, so whatever they collected was used for drinking and cooking, not for washing. You can imagine how the kids’ faces were like fly magnets. Disease traveled from face to face, with new infections popping up constantly.

The first bore hole that Operation Eyesight drilled was in Ongata Naado. It took the people there a bit by surprise, because they couldn’t immediately see the link between water and eye health. The big drilling truck that rolled into town must have had the same impact as a three-ring circus. When the water started gushing out of the ground, everyone showed up to watch in amazement.  One older man was heard to say: “I have seen water from above, but I didn’t know it could come from below!”

The community set up a committee to get the pump and generator installed and fund the rest of the pieces they would need, and they really took ownership. Donors through Operation Eyesight paid for the drilling and brought in technical expertise, but the people of Ongata Naado supplied everything else.

Like a seed sprouting, something was happening among these people – slow at first, but growing. I became aware of it when I returned in 2009. The village didn’t look much different, but the people were energized with plans for the future. Plus, everyone looked healthier and their new water source was in full operation.

Little did I know that the best was yet to come…

Read Part 2 and learn what happens in Ongata Naado.  And if you’d like to help bring water to parched communities, visit our Gift Guide to learn how.

The post Ongata Naado – a village transformed (Part 1 of 2) appeared first on Operation Eyesight.