Clear Eyes and Jobs for Women in Rural Bangladesh

Sending these reports to you simply warms my heart as it brings back memories of my trip to Bangladesh, seeing how enthusiastic these women in the communnity are as they provide promary eye care services to those who live around the area. 

Orbis International Bangladesh Office has been working in Bangladesh since 1985. Under the National Childhood Blindness Program, Orbis is establishing Vision Centres in the Community and empowering women to reduce avoidable Blindness and Refractive Error.

Your generous giving will help us do mainly three things:

1. Develop the capacity of Rural Women to became mid-level ophthalmic personnel: The project will provide support to train locally recruited women vision technicians (VT) to manage the Vision Center. Each vision center will have at least two vision technicians trained by partners. A total of two such persons will be trained by the recognized institutions to provide primary eye care services to the community. Since these Vision Centers will be connected with the Base hospitals through Information Technology, Orbis will provide support to partners to train staff for the tele-consultation process and overall IT management.

1. Orient Frontline Health Workers: In order to strengthen community engagement and support early detection and timely referral, staff and volunteers of health and development organizations will be trained on primary eye care and eye health problems. 100 Front line health workers will be oriented on Primary Eye Care. Material will be developed and used during orientation.

1. Organize effective outreach camps and community awareness program: 10 outreach camps will be organized in the community to identify eye problems. At each Vision Centre, vision technicians will work with community leaders to plan, organize and support outreach camps. The outreach coordinator of the Base hospital will work out a plan and marketing strategies for reaching out and attracting patients in the community. For community outreach and patient mobilization, the project will support the partner to develop promotional materials (banner, leaflets, poster, brochures etc.), Information and Educational Communications and Behavior Change Communication, and will ensure that these are effectively used during counseling, community meetings and mobilization of activities.

We're on track for the plan, thanks to your support for these women in the community.

Gratefully,

Elaine