School Eye Health Program
The School Eye Health (SHE) component was set up in 2015 in partnership with a Dutch Foundation, Better Sight Better Learning (BSBL) and in collaboration with Signum Vitae and Sam Vision. The objective is to improve learning opportunities for school children affected by poor vision through the provision of spectacles and treatment of eye infections.
The project is designed to recruit on average 20 volunteer teachers per school who are trained to do basic vision screening on all students in the school. IFA’s School Eye Health Coordinator (SEHC), a practicing optometrist, and additional volunteer optometrists from Sam Vision then carefully screen the selected students for refraction errors, eye infections and eye referrals. Signum Vitae and Sam Vision provide subsidized spectacles for these students.
Each year 10 new schools are selected by the sub-city education bureau and previous schools are monitored and evaluated. On average 2% of students per new school need spectacles, 1% need treatment for eye infections and 4.6% need referral for suspected eye diseases. A proposal is now being put forward to make the project sustainable with the establishment of a mobile eye clinic.
Child eye health is a significant public health issue, particularly in low income countries like Ethiopia, where blindness is recognized as one of the major public health problems, and to this end a National Committee for the Prevention of Blindness (NCPB), chaired by the Ministry of Health (MOH) was setup.
There is a high prevalence of vision impairment among children in Ethiopia on whom it can have a devastating impact. A child’s eyes are constantly in use in the classroom and at play; good vision is important for the visual tasks’ students perform daily such as reading, writing, chalkboard and computer work. When a child has poor vision, their education and participation in other activities suffers.
According to WHO’s 2012 report, more than 80% of all vision impairment can be prevented or cured. School health programs provide a unique opportunity for providing such preventive and curative services, and in many countries schools screening for URE is a routine practice. In Ethiopia School Eye Health (SEH) is a component of the National School Health and Nutrition Strategy and since 2015 IFA has included the School Eye Health as a component of the School Health and Nutrition program (SHNP) it is implementing. Through the SEH, IFA provides vision screening in primary schools to identify children with refractive errors and provide them with suitable spectacles.
To date through the SEHP 40,000 primary school children were screened for poor vision and 600 primary school children have received corrective eyeglasses. The indirect beneficiaries were the 400 volunteer teachers who received training in vision screening. The activities of the SEHP are:
- Training of teachers on vision screening
- Conduction of refraction for students on school site
- Provision of spectacles for those identified to have refractive error
- Provision of referral for students with eye infections and other eye problems
- Provision of reading glasses for the volunteer teachers
- Conduction of annual follow-up to review the status of the children who received eyeglasses in the previous year
HELP
Gessesse Memorial Foundation
dba International Fund for Africa
is a Virginia Nonprofit Corporation
with IRS 501(c)(3) tax exempt status.
Tax ID 61-1512663
4205 Cordell Street