Unite For Sight's Philosophy of International Eye Care

Our high-impact programs are sustainable, apply best practice principles in global health and development, and achieve effective change.

Best Practice Principles

• We work with local eye clinic partners to create and implement effective, sustainable eye care programs that demonstrate measurable results.
• Our eye care services are comprehensive, including examinations by local eye doctors, diagnosis and care for all treatable conditions, promotion, and prevention. This full range of services is delivered to the population year-round.
• Outreach services are brought to the people in their villages, whether those remote areas are 1 hour from the local eye clinic, or 7 hours from the clinic.
• We eliminate patient barriers to care by fully funding surgeries, bringing eye care services to the patients, providing transportation to the eye clinic for surgery as needed, and educating communities about blindness elimination.
• All eye care and surgeries are provided by local eye doctors.
• We promote high quality surgery with good visual outcome.Unite For Sight's partner ophthalmologists are highly skilled and trained to provide the most advanced type of cataract surgery (SICS and Phaco).
• We enhance the quality and productivity of our partner eye clinics and provide continuing professional development opportunities for our partner ophthalmologists and ophthalmic nurses.
• We mobilize eye care professionals throughout the world to work collaboratively, and we encourage the donation of quality equipment to our partner eye clinics.
• We engage, inspire, and train non-eye care professionals to support and assist eye clinics globally. These volunteers receive training in eye health, public health, and international development, and while immersed in effective Unite For Sight programs, they gain skills to become new leaders in global health.
• We run a highly effective and efficient organization, and we ensure that 100% of online donations and 100% of donations raised by volunteers go directly to providing eye care for patients living in extreme poverty.

"We really need to encourage a lot of NGOs interested in eye care to follow Unite For Sight's example and to work from the bottom up. Many NGOs, the way they start, there are a lot of costs and a lot of overhead, and very little actually goes out to benefit those in the program. But in the case of Unite For Sight, they came and got in touch with us. We are a small clinic, and we started outreaches to communities. People started benefiting, the authorities got to know about this and they really appreciated the value of what Unite For Sight is doing..."--Ghanaian ophthalmologist Dr. James Clarke discusses the significance of Unite For Sight's model

Our programs are led by local ophthalmologists and eye clinics

Global health programs are not effective or ethical unless they are incorporated into the local health system.

Unite For Sight and its partner communities and eye clinics create eye disease-free communities and work to achieve the Vision 2020 goals of the World Health Organization and International Agency for Prevention of Blindness. Unite For Sight works with eye clinics worldwide that previously attempted to provide free and low cost eye care services in their community, but were precluded by lack of staffing and funding. Unite For Sight's model is unique among global health and volunteer organizations in that it involves local and visiting volunteers who serve as support staff to eye doctors in the field. Additionally, Unite For Sight provides grants to its partner eye clinics to hire local ophthalmic nurses, optometrists, translators, and coordinators to assist in remote rural village outreach programs.

Assisted by local and visiting volunteers, the eye clinics' optometrists and ophthalmic nurses diagnose and treat eye disease in the field, and surgical patients are brought to the eye clinic for surgery by local ophthalmologists. Visiting ophthalmologist volunteers participate with the local ophthalmologists, while visiting optometrist volunteers participate with the local optometrists and ophthalmic nurses.

Unite For Sight's programs are sustainable, focus on building local capacity, and create long-term change. All of the eye care programs are led locally by the eye clinic's ophthalmic staff. The outreach teams (comprised of the local eye clinic's staff and Unite For Sight volunteers) travel daily into remote villages, slums, and refugee camps, to provide on-site eye care. Patients requiring surgery are transported to the eye clinic and then returned to their home village after their operation. Eye care is provided on a monthly basis to all villages that are visited by the outreach team, which is important to eliminate preventable blindness. One month after their operation, the postoperative surgery patients receive evaluation by the outreach team that revisits their village. During that same visit, new patients from the village and surrounding area are evaluated, treated, and selected for surgery. This process continues, thereby providing ongoing eye care to the communities.

We empower patients and communities

Unite For Sight not only restores vision, but also empowers patients and their families.

Blindness in the developing world has a significant effect on families, employment, income, and on the education of children within the family. Social stigma related to blind patients is commonplace in many communities in the developing world. Those who are blind are oftentimes considered to be a burden to the family because they are not able to contribute to a family's income. Additionally, instead of attending school, children within a family are frequently assigned to the role of the caregiver of blind adults.

"Being blind means that your liberty is ceased; you live on Earth, but in a different world not part of Earth. Now, the family can come to me with their problems for me to give advice, but when I was blind, one could never remember that I was important to the family. I want to give my thanks and appreciation to all those who are working with Unite For Sight that made me important again."- Buduburam Refugee Camp Unite For Sight Patient Whose Sight Was Restored

Ghanaian Ophthalmologist and Medical Advisory Board Member Dr. Seth Wanye explains:

When we talk about healthcare needs in the government sector, it is all about killer diseases. The government's attention is on these diseases that actually cause immediate death. It is assumed that eye diseases do not kill, resulting in resources being channeled to other areas of healthcare. However, I have a different opinion. If you have someone who is blind, then someone else will have to forgo his or her activities in order to take care of this person. Oftentimes, you have a child who is supposed to go to school, but he is instead guiding a blind man around the house and directing him wherever he wants to go. This child could have gone to school, study, and become somebody in the future to help the family.

We often see very young people who are blind, many times younger than the age of 40. They become blind during their productive years; they could have been working and helping to contribute towards building wealth in the country. Instead, the blindness results in a financial loss to the nation because these people are not able to contribute to building the nation. We have therefore been trying to advocate to policy makers so that they understand that even though eye diseases do not kill, they do result in financial losses to the nation. We must see this as an emergency issue. I see eye care as a very important area, and I love to do what I am doing now, to try to help people who I think would benefit from the services that we provide.

In addition to the social consequences of blindness, there are significant mortality rates as well.

• Those who are blind in Africa have a four times higher mortality rate
• 60-80% of children who become blind die within 1-2 years
• 80% of blindness is curable or preventable

We Create a Network For An Exchange of Knowledge

Unite For Sight develops communication channels among its local partner eye clinic partners, which are treasure troves of knowledge and best practices. Proven effective practices, experiences, and lessons learned are exchanged between eye clinic partners located on three continents.

Most of the eye clinic partners also attend Unite For Sight's Annual Global Health Conference, which further encourages learning and innovation by sharing information and best practices with 2,500 conference participants across all disciplines of global health and international development.