Brighter Futures: Improving Child Eye Health in Tanzania
The Vision Catalyst Fund is partnering with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Tanzanian Ministry of Health to improve child eye health, with a £200,000 Eye Health Accelerator Grant over two years.
By Henry Marealle, Philip Bahati, Godfrey Furhini and Aeesha Malik
The Tanzanian government has shown real commitment to improving child eye health in recent years with bold changes including eye health into one of its main child health systems. We are building on this promising foundation with our continued collaboration with the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, LSHTM, academic institutions and all stakeholders with innovative integrated solutions and community engagement with the goal of bringing eye care to every child in Tanzania.
Underpinning the health system are local dispensaries and health centres which serve as the first point of contact for families throughout the country. Our project has focused on training the healthcare workers at this level, so they know how to check children’s eyes and also, importantly, educating parents on what to look for and do. The use of new low cost technologies designed for this setting, so that every healthcare worker has access to the tools, as well as our innovative integrated distant learning training approach to develop knowledge and skills in child eye health, has been a game changer to bring essential eye care to every child. This grassroots approach has been instrumental in identifying potential eye problems early, allowing for timely healthcare interventions that can prevent more serious complications, including blindness, down the line.
Despite this success Tanzania continues to face significant challenges in ensuring eye care can reach every child. Limited resources and a shortage of trained personnel at dispensaries and health centres often hamper progress. This bottleneck at the primary care level can have ripple effects throughout the entire system. We are working on these challenges through engaging with the community to further develop approaches on how to integrate eye care into every aspect of the health system. This would mean that children are checked after birth by midwives and at vaccination clinics. This has led us to develop district and regional level child eye health champions and teams who are working closely with those already delivering child health services. We are now focused on training every healthcare worker by adapting our innovative and streamlined training system and tools and working with communities to ensure every parent knows the importance of eye health. Empowering the local district health teams as well as midwives and nurses is bringing us closer to our goal to reach every child in Tanzania.
Baraka’s Story
Baraka is just one of the many children our project has helped to find and receive sight saving treatment. He was initially reviewed by his local nurse for routine health checks. She initially noted something maybe wrong with his eye but did not realise it could be serious and gave his mother antibiotic drops for him to use. One month later the healthcare worker was trained through our project. She realised there may bea more serious problem with Baraka’s eyes and returned to his home to give his mother a referral to hospital. He reached hospital and was found to have congenital cataracts and had surgery immediately. He has now returned home after his surgery able to see clearly for the first time since he was born - giving him back his childhood and future potential.
Baraka enjoying his new vision in the ward after surgery.
Mother arriving home from hospital after surgery.