"Her Sight is Worth It"

World Sight Day is around the corner and here at Seva Canada we have a host of local and national events aimed at raising awareness of blindness among girls and women. Our national video contest, Her Sight Is Worth It (http://www.seva.ca/contest.htm), has been featured in Canadian Teacher magazine and the BC Teacher's Federation newsletter. The idea is simple: create a 3-minute video on the topic of gender and blindness. Winners will be featured in the World Community Film Festival in 8 locations across Canada starting in January 2010.

On World Sight Day itself, Seva Canada is having a party. Two hundred people will be attending Seva's Eye Opener Benefit in Vancouver, featuring a 9-piece R&B dance band, a silent auction, door prizes and our special guest, Dr. Paul Courtright, the world expert on gender and blindness. Dr. Courtright arrives this evening in Vancouver and will be in Canada until October 11, where he'll be meeting with government representatives in Ottawa and Vancouver and doing media interviews about his work in Africa with the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology and the barriers that women and girls face in accessing eye care.

Seva Canada is using World Sight Day as a launching pad for a year-long campaign to raise awareness about the 30 million women and girls who are blind. That is a staggering number... almost the population of Canada. It's been said before that people don't go blind by the millions, but one personal tragedy at a time. Here's a story we just got from the amazing team at Seva Tibet about one of those 30 million tragedies...

Chime Dolkar, blind from bilateral cataracts, has spent the last two years barely surviving by begging on the streets of Nakchu, nomadic town at an elevation of 4500 meters in northern Tibet. Since the age of 4, her little daughter Tashi has led her blind mother by the right hand through the streets, trying to get enough food to keep them both from starving. At night, they would crawl into a small and nearly worn-out tent stationed near a bridge in the upper town.

There were times Tashi, now 6, begged by herself, telling her mother to rest in the tent. Several weeks ago, Tashi was begging on the street where the Civil Affairs office was located when an official, who was aware Chime’s blindness, told the little girl that a Seva medical team from Lhasa would be doing free surgeries for the blind and would be arriving in one week. He encouraged Tashi to talk her mother for treatment.

Tashi ran back to the tent with the great news. Chime reacted rather indifferently from hearing it and responded, “Surgery? Why would I want that? I am destined to become blind. It’s better for me to comply with my fate.” Poor Tashi didn’t really understand that much about destiny, fate and all that complicated hypothesis, and disagreed with her mom by saying, “Nothing is fixed. If you keep trying to change things for the better, what you call ‘fate’ will be different. Why don’t you try the surgery? It’s free. Please give it try, mom, please!”

Chime agreed, counting off the days until the Seva-funded medical team’s arrival. As each day passed, their excitement escalated. When the medical team arrived they diagnosed Chime with bilateral cataracts and on the first day of the camp Chime’s had cataract surgery on her left eye. Later, on the third day, she had surgery on her right eye.

Nothing in her 48 years of life had so transformed Chime’s life as listening to her daughter’s advice and regaining her sight through surgeries. Until then, Chime said that her life was “totally meaningless and a failure”.

The sight-restoration surgery has given Chime new hope and confidence. She is anxious to re-plan both her and Tashi’s life. No longer forced to beg, Chime is planning on asking the local government for a job at the Nakchu train station. Smiling, she says, “I will be very happy if I can work at the railway station…I can work as a garbage cleaner or security guard.” She gazes at Tashi and continues, “Tashi should be going to first grade of elementary school. Wow, life is not that bad after all!”

Her sight IS worth it.

Heather Wardle

Development Director

Seva Canada Society

100-2000 West 12th Ave.

Vancouver, B.C. V6J 2G2

Tel: 604-713-6622

Fax: 604-733-4292

www.seva.ca

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Seeing a Better Future in El Salvador

Dr Van Lansingh is Regional Coordinator of the Latin America Region, for the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness









In late July I went to El Salvador in order to meet with regional partners and country representatives for the second V2020 Central America Committees Meeting. The countries which attended were Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Belize, Costa Rica and Panama.

We discussed several topics and there was agreement in most of the points.

One of the biggest achievements was the compromise from all the participants to produce a situation diagnosis in order to be presented at the World Health Assembly next May, which will enable them to develop suitable strategies to fight blindness and visual impairment in order to update or develop the National PBL Plan.

Also a Community Eye Health Course was announced to take place in June 2010 at El Salvador University (Universidad de El Salvador).

Of course one of the most encouraging points in the signed Declaration of El Salvador, was the renewed commitment to celebrate de World Sight Day, October 8, as an advocacy tool for the general public and enhance government participation

We are all looking forward to meeting back again in June next year, in order to see how far we have “traveled” and hopefully share successful strategies which can be replicated amongst participants.

Dr. Van Lansingh

Regional Coordinator, VISION 2020 Latin America

www.v2020la.org

Blogging from Africa: VISION 2020 MALAWI

I am privileged to be one of the first people to be asked by the Communications Manager of VISION 2020: The Right to Sight through their new blog VISION 2020 Communications Manager to share stories of VISION2020 activities in Malawi.

Malawi has been active in VISION 2020 activities since 2000, and has successfully organised VISION 2020 workshops for Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The country completed its VISION 2020 five year Eye Care Plan in 2004, and progress has been made towards achieving goals to eliminating avoidable blindness in Malawi by the year 2020.

Based on the 3 pillars of VISION 2020, which are disease control, human resource development, and infrastructure & technology, childhood blindness was set as one of the major priorities and a Paediatric Ophthalmology unit was planned to be developed in Blantyre. As of now, through the VISION 2020 links programme, Blantyre was linked to York hill in Glasgow and the team from Glasgow have helped in building up capacity to develop the Unit. Infrastructure and equipment has been provided by the Team from Glasgow and also Sightsavers international's Malawi office. In addition a study of how blind and visually impaired children can be identified in the rural communities in Malawi to feed back to the Paediatric unit was started in 2007, as so far 3 districts have been covered (Mulanje, Zomba, Mangochi) with a good number of children identified.

Another disease listed was Trachoma, and to determine the burden of Trachoma in Malawi, a trachoma prevalence survey was done in 2008 and currently plans are under way to start trachoma control activities. In 2009 plans are under way to do a rapid assessment of avoidable blindness study and determine the magnitude of cataract in Malawi.

The greatest achievement is perhaps in the field of Human Resource Development. Two new ophthalmologists joined the team in Malawi (one based in Mzuzu - Northern, and the other in Nkhoma - Central Region). A Paediatric ophthalmologist, a Vitreoretinal ophthalmologist and a public health Ophthalmologist (myself) have been trained within the last two years. In addition a postgraduate training programme for Ophthalmologists has been started at the College of Medicine. Of more interest is that the first Malawian ophthalmologist and pioneer of Ophthalmology Dr. Moses Chirambo has retired in 2009 from Ophthalmology and has now become Malawi's Minister of Health.

A school for training ophthalmologists has been established in Malawi under a consortium led by International Centre for Eyecare Education (ICEE)

Blantyre Institute for Community Ophthalmology was established in 2008 and is responsible for all the logistical and technical support for the community eye researches that are currently being done in Malawi, and as part of the capacity building programme has made links with

VISION 2020 is here to stay, and will continue providing platform for eye care to advance in Malawi

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An Eastern Perspective: VISION 2020 - INDIA

Bihar, the third most populous state in India hosted the 5th Annual General Body Meeting of VISION 2020: The Right to Sight – India, a few days ago. Dr Abdul Kalam, India’s ex-president and VISION 2020 Global Ambassador gave the keynote address, highlighting the scope of need in Bihar.

The state has 600,000 people who are blind from cataract, yet the current system caters only to 140,000 every year. While 4.2 million people need refractive correction, only 65,000 have spectacles.

In his characteristic style, Dr Kalam made all the representatives take an oath to deliver quality eye care services to all, irrespective of their ability to pay. Dr Kalam’s speech is now VISION 2020 India’s “Patna Declaration”. We hope to use it as a guiding document for our work in this state and as a template for other states where eye care services are grossly inadequate.

The meeting also hosted technical sessions which were widely attended and appreciated. This AGM has set the benchmark for the future, winning accolades from its varied participants and supporters. The reasons for its success include active participation from all stakeholders – government and NGOs, and the effort put in by the VISION 2020 India team and its partners. We had made a commitment to Dr Kalam that we will hold an Action Oriented General Assembly and we fulfilled our promise.

There is a tremendous sense of fulfillment in our team members that we were able to bring together different organizations onto a common platform. We are so motivated that we are now using the mission statement “We will eliminate avoidable blindness in India by 2020." The real challenge is to now make sure that the momentum generated does not peter down but results in measurable impact.

This is the power, potential and magic of VISION 2020 INDIA.

The approach used in Bihar is now being replicated by VISION 2020 - INDIA for its Jodhpur, Rajasthan World Sight Day Celebrations, which will feature a celebrity dinner, along with our ever-popular technical sessions, all with the theme "Gender and Eye Health".

Do visit www.VISION2020IndiA.org for more information on our work and activities!

Dr Rajesh Noah,
Executive Director, VISION 2020 India

World Sight Day 2009: Gender and Eye Health

World Sight Day 2009 falls on October 8 this year. Two-thirds of blind people worldwide are women & girls. In many countries, men's access to eye care is twice that of women. Recognising these and many other such facts, the WSD theme for 2009 is Gender and Eye Health.

The VISION 2020 website features updates, downloadable material and images that could be used in your campaigns this World Sight Day. Please visit the Promotional Materials page on the VISION 2020 website for more of the same. Do keep us informed of your plans.

The VISION 2020 website will include WSD09 report and case studies document soon!

The 62nd World Health Assembly

The 62nd World Health Assembly (WHA) has endorsed the action plan for the prevention of avoidable blindness and visual impairment. This marks a critical milestone in ensuring that blindness prevention activities the world over receive adequate support from WHO member states and their ministries of health.

The Assembly saw support for ‘our’ action plan pouring in from 29 WHO member states. Delegates appreciated the high technical quality of the document and congratulated WHO and its Prevention of Blindness team on this accomplishment. They also narrated ongoing blindness prevention activities in their respective countries.

IAPB’s President Mr Christian Garms made a statement underlining the value of IAPB's collaboration with WHO and its willingness to further support joint activities.

I would like to thank HRH Prince Abdulaziz Bin Ahmad Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Regional Chair, IAPB EMR, Dr Abdulaziz Al Rajhi, Regional Co-Chair, IAPB EMR, Dr Ivo Kocur, Team Leader, WHO-PBD and all our members and friends who put in untold hours of effort to ensure this outcome.

Do read the news item on the VISION 2020 website and write to us with your comments…

Peter Ackland,
CEO, IAPB

A New Logo for IAPB

The IAPB logo has seen many variations over the 25 years of its existence – some of the older versions (and their distortions) can still be found on the Web and some outdated publications. The current logo has remained unchanged (officially, at least) for almost a decade.

However, as an image, it poorly complemented the more dynamic VISION 2020 logo. Its design made it stand out in isolation from the VISION 2020 global initiative, thereby confusing some of our supporters, who could not make out the relationship between IAPB and VISION 2020. It was as if we were promoting two distinct, unrelated brands that competed for attention.

To address these concerns, IAPB commissioned Red Giant Projects, a UK-based design agency that had already done some wonderful work with Standard Chartered Bank’s “Seeing is Believing” programme, to work on corporate identity and design principles for both the Agency and VISION 2020, its Global Health Partnership with WHO. The new IAPB logo, presented as a ‘lock-up’ with the VISION 2020 logo, underscores the relationship between the two brands – VISION 2020 is IAPB’s flagship initiative and primary activity. What we are is IAPB and what we do is VISION 2020: The Right to Sight.

We hope the new logo, especially with the lockup, refreshes the brand, eliminates the inadequacies of the earlier version and spells out who we are and what we do with clarity.

Abi Smith
Communications Manager

Introducing IAPB and VISION 2020

The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness was established in 1975 to lead international efforts for blindness prevention. 1999 saw the launch of the Agency’s flagship initiative
VISION 2020: The Right to Sight,
a 50:50 partnership with the
World Health Organization (WHO).

IAPB has members who are based in, or are active in 7 world regions – Latin America, North America, Africa, Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, South East Asia and Western Pacific. With more than 100 members and a partnership with WHO, IAPB is best placed to ensure that avoidable blindness receives adequate attention in the global health agenda. With numerous health issues, pandemics like Swine Flu, and many other health conditions vying for our attention there is every danger that avoidable blindness could slip away from global consciousness – resulting in the number of blind people growing to 76 million by the year 2020. VISION 2020 provides the best means possible to avert such an outcome.

In this post and more to come, we will use pictures and links to the VISION 2020 website to highlight stories from around the world that are of interest to me and that I hope will be of interest to you, too...

Peter Ackland,
Chief Executive Officer, IAPB

Hello and Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the new VISION 2020 blog! With our posts here, we hope to let you peek into the various aspects of our work, and showcase the impact of VISION 2020.

I am the Chief Executive Officer of IAPB – the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. IAPB is a global, umbrella organisation bringing together more than 100 eye care NGOs, national bodies, corporations and foundations, all working together to ensure that blindness prevention gets its due on the global health agenda. We are a UK-registered charity and have our offices in London.

I took over as IAPB’s Chief Executive after the IAPB Board Meeting in Bahrain in March 2009; moving on from my appointment as IAPB Director of Programmes. I have had numerous opportunities to interact with IAPB members and other stakeholders who play an important role in delivering VISION 2020’s mission. I have over 25 years experience of international development work and prior to this role, I spent eight years with Sightsavers International – an IAPB Group A member.

Advocacy is a primary strategic objective for IAPB's role within VISION 2020. With this in mind, I hope you will be interested to learn of our activities at this year's World Health Assembly. If so, stay tuned!

Peter Ackland,
Chief Executive Officer, IAPB