RENEWING COMMITMENT

ESCRS President Roberto Bellucci has renewed the commitment of the ESCRS to continue supporting the work of the Society’s two charities Orbis and Oxfam in 2015.

Representatives from both charities shared a booth at the XXXII Congress of the ESCRS in London,where they explained the work being carried out with the Society’s funding.

OXFAM WASH Programme

Oxfam’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion (also known as WASH) programme is supporting communities in the conflict-affected region of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

One of Africa’s largest countries with a population of 65 million people, DRC is ranked in the bottom 10 countries worldwide on the Human Development Index, despite its vast potential wealth. Over 20 years of conflict in the country have created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. An estimated 5.4 million lives have been lost (many from preventable diseases) since 1998 alone.

The primary objective of the project funded by the ESCRS is to improve the health and well-being of conflict-affected communities in five villages in the Mweso Health Zone and 10 villages in the Masisi Health Zone.

This is being done through a number of measures:

• Limiting the risks of water contamination and water borne-diseases in households by improving water quality and long-term water management by communities themselves;

• Improving availability and use of sanitation facilities;

• Improving knowledge of good hygiene practices and protection measures against health risks.

Orbis Gondar Project

Ethiopia has one of the highest blindness rates in the world, with levels double those of other developing countries. Out of a population of 82 million people, 1.2 million Ethiopians are blind, and 72,000 of these are children.

Orbis, with the support of ESCRS, is partnering with the Gondar University Hospital to establish the country’s third Child Eye Health Tertiary Facility (CEHTF) for North West Ethiopia. This programme will provide children with access to high-quality eye care, which in turn will contribute to a decrease in childhood blindness and low vision in North West Ethiopia.

Before Orbis began this programme in 2011, only two limited-capacity CEHTFs existed in the entire country. The World Health Organisation recommends that there is a minimum of one CEHTF facility per 10 million people.

With a population of approximately 91.7 million people, the need for Child Eye Health services in Ethiopia is great. With substantial support from ESCRS, Orbis is well on its way to staffing and equipping the third of these facilities at Gondar. It will have capacity to reach 14 million people within its catchment area.

Through sponsoring the Fellowship and Hospital Based Programme (HBP) training, ESCRS has allowed the CEHTF to be staffed by a team who have received world class training, enhancing their ability to treat greater numbers of children and provide them with a brighter future.

Following three years of substantial support, the ESCRS-funded sub-speciality training for Dr Mulusew Asferaw and Dr Asamere Tsegaw has taken place at Gondar University Hospital, Tanzania, India and the UK. This training has formed an integral part of the Orbis-led programme to substantially reduce the number of children living with blindness and visual impairment in North West Ethiopia.