Eye Health Accelerator Grant: International Centre for Eye Health
By Dr Aeesha NJ Malik
Clinical Assistant Professor and Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon at International Centre of Eye Health at London School of Hygiene and Medicine
Did you know that half of all blind children don’t need to be? In many low-income countries, the primary eye care services that are needed to prevent blindness or other sight loss in children are insufficient or non-existent.
Alarmingly, the main set of guidelines for primary care for children, the WHO / UNICEF Integrated Management of Childhood and Newborn Illnesses (IMNCI), which is used in 100 countries worldwide, does not currently include eye health.
To combat this, in 2019, a team from the International Centre for Eye Health and Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre successfully piloted training for primary health workers (PHW) in eye health in Tanzania, showing the potential to reach thousands of children with previously unidentified eye conditions.
With this Eye Health Accelerator Grant from the Vision Catalyst Fund, we are able to scale up our project, integrating eye health into IMNCI in Tanzania, training hundreds more PHWs and treating a minimum of 10,000 children with eye conditions, some potentially serious and even life-threatening.
Our work won’t stop there, however. Our ambition is for this project to be a blueprint for integrating eye health into child healthcare globally, increasing the awareness and skills for diagnosing and treating eye conditions in children under 5 years old. For children this young, sight loss can affect all areas of their future life, from education and employment to wellbeing.
Our initial aim is to have eye health included in IMNCI for all African countries, followed by all countries worldwide. This vital funding from VCF will allow us to get one step closer to this goal, ensuring that no child is living with sight loss needlessly.
Dr Milka Mafwiri checking the eyes of a child at Muhimbili University, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Photo courtesy of Dr Aeesha NJ Malik.