In 2012, Ving Fai was promoted to research manager at BHVI and returned to their headquarters in South Africa. With those three sets of very important skills, going straight into the field, I think that really helped me a lot.” “The MSc Community Eye Health course focused a lot on programme planning, programme development, and focused a lot on understanding how you monitor and evaluate the programme that you put in, and also a big component of management. ![]() Ving Fai believes taking up this role just two months after completing his Scholarship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) played an important part in implementing the skills and knowledge gained during his studies. Vision centres now, apart from offering glasses prescriptions, are also treating minor eye diseases, such as conjunctivitis, if the technician is supervised by a senior clinical officer (for example, an ophthalmologist, ophthalmic officer, optometrists, experienced nurse). The plan also included the establishment of an optometry school to enable future studies and provide clinics.īy 2012 when Ving Fai left the project, 60 graduates had been trained to deliver basic eyecare, an optometry school was established to provide clinics, as well as four vision centres based in different areas of Eritrea. This included the development of local vision centres, where graduates would be based to provide services at community level. As such, although primarily an education programme to build skills and training, Ving Fai worked closely with the Ministry of Health to create positions for these graduates across Eritrea. Whilst the plan focused on the training and deployment of graduates, there were no established government posts for them to take up. They were also trained to diagnose severe eyecare problems, which would then be referred to more qualified eyecare personnel for treatment. To improve access to eyecare, Ving Fai’s plan introduced a two-year training programme for optometry diploma graduates to qualify them to deliver basic eyecare, which in most cases can be the determining the prescription and dispensing of glasses. “In 2009, it was reported for a population of around 5 million people, there were less than ten eyecare personnel.” At the time of Ving Fai’s posting, national services in Eritrea were under development, which gave Ving Fai and his team a blank canvas to work with, a blankness emphasised by Ving Fai’s stats about the country. ![]() The prolonged conflict impacted the country’s development. Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year war. For his first assignment, he was based in Eritrea and was tasked with developing a national human resource for eye health plan, with the aim of training optometry diploma graduates to provide basic primary eyecare. ![]() That’s why we reduce poverty, improve education, and so much more.”įollowing the completion of his Commonwealth Shared Scholarship in 2009, Ving Fai joined Australian eyecare NGO, the Brien Holden Vision Institute (Africa) Trust (BHVI), based in South Africa, where he took up the position of lecturer. “People also now understand that improved vision is very closely related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), for example, improved health, improved wellbeing, improved work productivity. “I think eye health in general has been slowly gaining attention since 1999, when ‘VISION 2020: The Right to Sight’ started” Ving Fai says, in reference to the global programme launched by WHO and International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. Understanding and researching the needs of countries in relation to eye health programmes, thus plays an important role in identifying appropriate and sustainable approaches to combatting preventable blindness and other treatable eye diseases. Instead, several countries rely on NGOs to deliver short-term eye health programmes and interventions, resulting in limited coverage or passive eye health seeking behaviour. Despite the importance of eye health globally, in many countries eye health is still not part of national health plans and does not receive sustained funding. Of those, 1 billion have a preventable vision impairment. Commonwealth Alumnus Ving Fai Chan shares his experience and results on building training programmes and centres to deliver basic eyecare in low-resource settings.īlindness and vision impairment affects at least 2.2 billion people around the world according to the WHO World Report on Vision 2019.
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