Building Sustainable Eye Health Services in African Countries

Health & research

Jan 26

Who: Right to Sight

What: Eye surgery

Where: Kenya

Project period: 2011 – 2024

Web: Right to Sight

The overall goal is to help reduce and eradicate all needless blindness and visual impairment. 90% of visual impairment in developing countries are needless blindness.

Cataracts are responsible for almost 50% of all needless blindness and severe visual impairment. Cataracts affects all generations, including children and youths. When untreated, cataracts lead to years of disability and usually, an inability to lead a professional life. The only treatment for cataract is surgery.

The number of children with cataract in developing countries is sky high compared to western countries. In many cases, children are born with congenital cataract that affect both eyes. An operation needs to be carried out before the age of six to avoid irreversible blindness or severe visual impairment. Untreated, these children will not be able to contribute to society and in many cases not be able to take care of themselves.

Eradication needless blindness in Kenya

Right to Sight was founded in 2006 by ophthalmologist Kate Coleman to address the shortage of African ophthalmologists/eye surgeons. In 2011, Right to Sight Norway was founded as an independent Norwegian charity, led by Norwegian ophthalmologists and other specialist doctors.

Right to Sight Norway has focused on Kenya. Eradicating needless blindness on a national level is extremely challenging.

Kenya, like other African countries, has major challenges in other health areas as well. Despite being the most developed country in East Africa, large sections of the population still live in poverty. The poor are mostly affected by needless blindness.

The Right to Sight model is to build sustainable eye health services by training ophthalmologists, ophthalmic clinical officers (OCOS) and other health personnel in cataract surgery, through the technique SICS. This method is faster than traditional cataract surgery, thus can increase the number of operations in a short time and at a low cost.

Training and free surgery

Poor patients receive free surgery while an experienced ophthalmologist teaches. In order to obtain the required number of patients, we also provide support for outreach activities. This is vital in Africa. People must be reached, made aware of eye diseases and the possibility of treatment.

To train more eye surgeons in the SICS technique is an effective way to reduce needless blindness. Neither the University of Nairobi nor the Kenya Medical Training Center provide practical SICS instruction. Right to Sight-supported clinics have been the only ones in Kenya offering this training for free to African eye surgeons.

In recent years, we have collaborated with two eye clinics, the Innovation Eye Center in Kisii and the Kwale Eye Center in Mombasa. The collaboration with the Innovation Eye Center ended in 2020. The clinic was sustainable and could continue on its own.

With our support, the Innovation Eye clinic has carried out 232 outreaches, examined 38,000 patients and operated 3,000 for cataracts with simultaneous training of ophthalmologists in SICS. This has resulted in 27 new ophthalmic surgeons, 25% of all ophthalmologists in Kenya, but 3000 changed lives.

Since end of 2017, we have supported Kwale Eye Center in Mombasa. The clinic has extensive experience in training nurses specializing in eye diseases, Ophthalmic Clinical Officers in surgery (approved education in Kenya), and has a special focus on blindness and low vision in children. The clinic is run by Dr. Helen Roberts, originally a British ophthalmologist, who is highly recognized in her region. Her expertise also includes cataract surgery in young children, for which there is a great need. Less than 10 ophthalmologists in Kenya have this expertise. The clinic is the only eye health service in a large area covering more than one million people, and they treat around 30,000 patients a year. To date, 8 Ophthalmic Clinical Officers have been trained as cataract surgeons with the support from Right to Sight.

The organization Right to Sight Norway consists of medical doctors, optometrist and professionals in economics and law. Everyone works for free. The work in Kenya is funded by the Grieg Foundation.