Funded by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office and other donors through Christian blind mission UK. The projects primary goal is to prevent avoidable blindness through supporting primary eye care services and provision of cataract surgical services in Malawi. It is being implemented in all 9 district of the central region and Nkhatabay in the northern region.
The project uses multiple approaches to ensure equity and value for money in provision of primary eye care services and further strengthening the health systems. These approaches include;
- Establishing primary and secondary eye care services by training and equipping existing staff at rural health centers and District Hospitals.
- Use of specialist (tertiary) expertise personnel (ophthalmologists) to provide coaching, mentoring and quality control through regular visits to District Hospitals; and to conduct cataract surgery & train ophthalmic clinical officers
- Provision of medical equipment and essential eye care drugs in district hospitals
- Community engagement and sensitization on the eye services including on the importance of eye health and mobilization of communities for screening and referrals.
- Ensuring gender, elderly and disability inclusive approaches, including engagement of Disabled People’s Organizations (DPOs).
- Advocating for an inclusive reporting system with data disaggregation by age, gender and disability to support the Ministry of Health (MoH) with basic data collection.

Cataract surgeon conduct a surgery in Salima district as part of provision of specialist care in the districts.

Nurse assisting patient during cataract surgery camps Kasungu.

Equipment being used at Mchinji district hospital Eye department OPD bought through the project support

Clinician assessing patient with equipment bought through the project

DPO’S Community rehabilitation worker assessing colleague during primary eye care training

Patient being able to see during post cataract surgery.

Patient expressing gratitude after cataract surgery and being able to see.

Review meeting with health care workers

Training of district Ophthalmic Clinical Officers on inclusion, equity and primary eye care

Community leader’s awareness meetings on cataract and primary eye care. (Environmental health officer responding to questions from community leaders in Mchinji)

Beneficially feedback 6 months after cataract surgery patient being able to do normal household chores:
Letiness Chilambura (Dowa): “Changa chimwemwe kuti ndidapenya pano ndimantha kugwira ntchito zapakhomo mosavutikila zomwe ankhoma anandichitila akachitilenso ena”
Translation: Am happy that I can now see and am able to do household chores that I could not do prio, it is my wish that what was done to me by Nkhoma Mission Hospital should also be done to others.