Eye Health Social Impact Guarantee

Intervention

Social or environmental challenge

More than a billion people in the world have poor vision. The solutions are already available for 90% of them through cost-effective solutions like glasses and cataract surgery. Low- and middle-income countries are home to 90% of visually impaired persons. Women and girls experience the majority of vision loss and are less likely to receive care. There is an estimated $410 billion annual global cost of productivity losses associated with vision loss. The World Health Organization estimates it would take $24.7 billion to close the gap for unaddressed refractive errors and cataracts globally.
Poor vision is a major public health problem in Vietnam for school-going children. Over 3 million school children have a visual impairment, and they face challenges in accessing high quality services and assistive technologies. In Vietnam, prevalence of uncorrected refractive error among urban school children aged 6–15 years is 25–40%, which is one of the highest in the world. Of those who have uncorrected refractive error, only 33% of them have access to a pair of spectacles, which 60% of the time is likely an incorrect prescription. Key drivers included the lack of consideration of eye health in prior school health policy frameworks, the lack of guidelines for implementing vision screening during annual school health check-ups for children, poor awareness of the importance of eye health among teachers, and the lack of training resources for school nurses and teachers to provide eye health services and referrals. School eye health is now an important priority for the government. In February 2022, the Government of Vietnam announced the objective of implementing the National School Eye Health Guideline across all schools in Vietnam.

Description of the intervention

The intervention will work to strengthen the rollout of the Vietnamese Government's National School Eye Care guidelines. Activities will include school-based screening, diagnosis, referral, and treatment interventions, along with educational communications campaigns to facilitate preventative eye care. The programme is taking a systems strengthening approach including capacity building, health system integration and development of new processes.

Target population

The primary target population is school children from 6–15 years old, prioritising economically disadvantaged and ethnic minority communities.

Outcome metrics

• TBD

Last data update

Data for this pipeline project was last updated in April 2022