Local Solutions, Global Impact: Operation Eyesight

Local Solutions, Global Impact: Operation Eyesight

In the rural community of Obrachire, in southern Ghana, community health nurses like Felicia wear many hats.

With few health services in the area, her neighbors come to her for advice on a range of health issues.

For Felicia, it’s more than a job; it’s a labor of love.

“I love to see people in good health. I am passionate about helping the sick to recover,” says the 37-year-old.

Felicia watched her daughter struggle at school due to vision loss and wanted to help make eye health care available to others in Obrachire. After receiving training in primary eye care from Operation Eyesight, she now provides eye health screening, education, and referrals for others in her community.

Felicia says it’s helped take her nursing work to the next level.

“I can now give my community members an in-depth education on eye health when I go for home visits,” she explains. “I find satisfaction in detecting eye problems in people and assisting them to get the treatment they need.”

Felicia joined a global team of more than 2,000 community health workers—80 percent of whom are women—who partner with Operation Eyesight in its mission to prevent blindness and restore sight. Traveling door to door, they bring eye health screening, specialist referral, and health education to others in their communities.

“By training people to provide eye care in their own community, we’re able to make eye health care available where it’s needed most, on a sustainable basis,” says Kashinath Bhoosnurmath, Operation Eyesight’s President and CEO. “It’s a model of care that empowers entire communities to look after their own eye health.”

With programs in 10 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, Operation Eyesight is focused on establishing vision centers and fostering partnerships with local hospitals.

By partnering with local communities and donors, the organization has brought the Gift of Sight to millions of people over its 60-year history.

Community health workers like Felicia are many people’s first point of contact with their health system, and they form a critical link in a chain that connects people with local vision centers and Operation Eyesight’s partner hospitals.

“Our approach has been successfully replicated across communities and countries, again and again,” Bhoosnurmath adds. “The best part is that it’s women who are leading this work in their own communities.”

More than 6,000 miles away, in Assam, India, community health workers are having similar success. On Majuli, a river island in the Brahmaputra River, residents have to travel for hours to visit a hospital, and local health services are limited.

“Although more than 167,000 people live on the island, there was no doctor, no eye camp, nothing. Many people spend their whole lives without ever receiving vision care,” explains Tapobrat Bhuyan, Operation Eyesight’s project manager in the area. “But today, things are changing.”

After community health workers conducted door-to-door eye health surveys, Operation Eyesight hosted several screening camps on the island, where patients received prescription eyeglasses and patients needing eye surgery could be transported to the organization’s partner hospital.

“Seeing the look on someone’s face who has just regained their sight is something I will never forget,” Bhuyan says.

Give the life-changing Gift of Sight and help transform the lives of individuals and entire communities. Visit operationeyesight.com/USA to make a donation or learn more.