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VOSH/International supports vision care worldwide
Volunteers provide exams and eyeglasses and also partner with sustainable local clinics.
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All humanitarian eye care missions, both optometric and ophthalmologic, should strive to build capacity and promote sustainability.
For more than 40 years, VOSH/International (V/I) and its chapters have been the voice of optometry in developing nations, providing free, quality eye care services through a variety of delivery systems and clinic models to optimize patient care and support sustainability.
As the landscape of health care and technology changes, V/I has changed too. With its support of sustainable clinics through outreach and provision of eye care to those most in need worldwide, VOSH restores more than vision. It allows individuals to regain independence through sight, return to work and imagine the future. We do this by embracing our traditions while expanding our horizons.
V/Il’s mission is to provide and sustain vision care in areas of the world where people have no access nor can afford care. The V/I board recognizes the need for sustainable solutions to increase the optometric capacity in the poorest countries. VOSH campaigns help more than 100,000 patients annually, but there are an estimated 600 million vision-impaired individuals (vision worse than 20/50) who need eyeglasses globally, and 90% of those are in the developing world. VOSH has grown to more than 75 state, regional, optometry school and international chapters. Members total nearly 5,000 – and growing.
Collaborations support WHO goal
In an effort to support the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) goal of eliminating preventable blindness by the year 2020, V/I partners with local groups and facilities with much of its outreach, and in areas such as Nicaragua, Mexico, Peru, El Salvador, Africa and Haiti, V/I supports local sustainable clinics to promote the provision of quality eye care.
VOSH also partners with many other well-known international organizations pursing similar goals, such as Lions International, the WHO, Optometry Giving Sight, the World Council of Optometry, Kiwanis International, Rotary International, the Brien Holden Vision Institute, Remote Area Medical, Care Harbor and Surgical Eye Expeditions, among others. In fact, one of V/I’s partners, Optometry Giving Sight, a fundraising organization, funds 35 local sustainable projects in 24 countries. These partnerships and relationships are increasing every year as VOSH chapters expand the provision of sustainable eye health to people worldwide.
Partnering with sustainable local clinics
Although sustainable local clinics are ideal, there can be a great financial cost to obtaining that goal. Eye clinics are expensive businesses, requiring medical equipment and supplies, skilled staff and general fixed operating costs, such as building expenses and maintenance. Most eye clinics in the developing world do not have the financial or human capital to provide eye care to nonpaying patients in rural villages and refugee camps.
David R.
McPhillips
VOSH can help existing eye clinics develop outreach infrastructure so that free care can be provided to patients living in extreme poverty. Meanwhile, the clinic’s private business continues as an enterprise independent of the VOSH-supported outreach programs. This strong base of independence and sustainability indicates good business practices. For these reasons, V/I encourages its chapters to partner with existing, sustainable eye clinics that continue to provide care to paying patients.
Used eyeglasses
Traditional arguments against dispensing used eyeglasses have centered around costs associated with preparing and shipping the glasses. VOSH volunteers provide free labor and often take supplies as checked baggage at no cost. The fact that some eyeglasses might be out of style may not always be important to patients who wait hours for an exam and need glasses to improve their quality of life. These patients typically do not reject glasses for a fashion reason.
The Richmond Eyeglass Inventory Matching System is a computerized system utilized by chapters to easily locate exact prescriptions from their supplies for patients, and VOSH chapters also follow standards and protocols for taking prescriptions they know will be used to minimize or eliminate any waste. VOSH chapters strive to provide high quality care and high quality eye wear at all times and to dispense accurate prescriptions at all times. Wherever possible, VOSH should partner with sustainable eye clinics locally that have surfacing and edging capabilities to manufacture glasses not carried with the VOSH team, or teams should attempt to make new, custom glasses in the field.
Needs in Guatemala
Although it has been suggested that the eye clinics in Guatemala co-built by VOSH now render VOSH campaigns unnecessary, that is not the case. Several VOSH teams traveled to Guatemala in 2014 and are scheduled to go in 2015, by invitation of local health care providers and nongovernment organizations, to provide much-needed eye care, both in Guatemala City and in rural areas.
The Visualiza clinics may be at capacity with their own external outreach support, but in a country of 14 million people, many of whom are living in poverty, there is still great need for VOSH services. And while it may have been serendipity in 1994 that led to the construction of a much-needed eye hospital, I would say it was the traditional VOSH eye mission and the resulting trust and good impression that enabled VOSH-PA to be invited to return several times and eventually establish a permanent clinic and hospital.
Other sustainability projects
Not only does VOSH and its chapters provide free, quality vision care where needed, it is engaged in many other projects that support sustainability. V/I is involved in helping establish and support optometry schools at universities in the poorest countries because there are so few trained optometrists and even fewer optometry professors.
V/I and the Brien Holden Vision Institute (BHVI) have collaborated to create VOSH Corps, a program that recruits new optometry school graduates, preferably with residency experience, to teach abroad at these fledgling schools for 1 to 2 years. While the local college will pay the customary salary of a local professor, VOSH Corps will pay the balance of in-country living expenses and medical insurance so these new graduates can afford to volunteer. Salus University is also offering a 50% tuition discount on its online MPH program for VOSH Corps volunteers.
The BHVI has already established and is supporting optometry schools in Malawi, Mali, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Nicaragua and Vietnam and plans to develop schools in Mexico, Moldova and Haiti next year. VOSH Corps will address an extraordinary challenge and a new initiative and opportunity for North American optometrists in building optometric education in the developing world.
VOSH International also created its V/I Technology Transfer Program, which collects and refurbishes donated optometric equipment for optometry schools and eye clinics around the world. It makes it possible to develop new programs such as VOSH Corps and leads to sustainability.
Everyone, regardless of their circumstances, has the right to clear, comfortable vision. Everyone has the right to glasses that look and fit comfortably. Local facilities should be supported to provide appropriate low cost or no cost high quality eye care. The vision needs of the planet are enormous, but working together to provide quality eye care through a multitude of delivery systems can change the lives of millions.