A n estimated 45 million people around the world are blind. 1 Most of them have lost their sight to diseases that are treatable or preventable. Eighty percent of them live in the lesser-developed world in countries where chronic economic deprivation is exacerbated by the added challenge of failing vision. Without intervention, the number of individuals with blindness might reach 76 million by 2...

The programme Prior to 1995, access to eye care was poor. In April 1995 the Community Ocular Health and Valley Programme was started in the town of Yaruqui, with support from the Christian Blind Mission International (CBMI). The unit consisted of three rooms, with basic ophthalmic equipment. It was staffed by an ophthalmologist, an ophthalmic nurse and an administrator. From the outset, the emp...

Health and health care need to be distinguished from each other for no better reason than that the former is often incorrectly seen as a direct function of the latter. Heath is clearly not the mere absence of disease. Good Health confers on a person or groups freedom from illness and the ability to realize one's potential. Health is therefore best understood as the indispensable basis for defin...

The VISION 2020 initiative aims to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020. Cataract, the main cause of blindness and other visual impairment, is a main focus of this effort. In India, the Aravind Eye Care System provides an impressive model demonstrating how high quality eye care, including cataract surgery, can be delivered to large numbers and made affordable to all. Similarly, financ...

Three of the groups (Race Relations 2020, Action Evaluation, and Appreciative Inquiry) bring a template to a new situation. For Race Relations 2020 this involves forming a group and taking them through a flexible curriculum that results in an action plan. In the case of Action Evaluation, the team reaches out to key stakeholder groups and invites them to complete a survey, which serves as the b...