Document Type

Conference Paper

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

Ophthalmology, Health policy and services, Public and environmental health

Publication Details

Irish Forum for Global Health Biennial Conference in association with Irish Aid. November 29th-30th 2010 Partnerships to Address Health and Diseases of Poverty Challenges

Abstract

According to the WHO about 831 million people are visually impaired worldwide, 45 million of them are blind. Most people with visual impairment are older, and females are more at risk at every age, in every part of the world. Uncorrected Refractive Error accounts for over half of all visual impairment. About 87% of the worlds visually impaired live in developing countries. The Mozambique Eyecare Programme (MEP) is a cross institutional collaboration between governments, higher education institutions, non-governmental organisations and corporations. The aims of this Programme are to collaborate to provide a sustainable solution to the problem of avoidable blindness in developing nations, by addressing the significant barrier of local human resource capacity development, through optometric education, research capacity strengthening and the enhancement of specialist knowledge for future collaborations. The MEP is an example of how cross institutional collaborations work effectively and efficiently to address uncorrected refractive error as a leading cause of global blindness and vision impairment. Dissemination of lessons learned will inform collaboration with the government and relevant organisations to integrate outcomes into the development of a National Eyecare Plan in Mozambique and other countries.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/nbn9-qr41

Funder

Irish Aid, Technological University Dublin, International Centre for Eyecare Education, Universidade Lurio

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