WHO adopts VisionSpring approach to expand global access to reading glasses
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The WHO is modeling its new Training in Assistive Products program after VisionSpring’s global methodology to help health care workers in underserved countries identify presbyopia and distribute reading glasses to those in need.
According to a VisionSpring press release, 1 billion people worldwide have uncorrected blurry vision, and most individuals would benefit from a simple pair of reading glasses. Since 2006, VisionSpring’s Reading Glasses for Improved Livelihoods program has corrected the vision of 2 million people with help from community health workers in regions with few eye doctors.
“It is significant that the World Health Organization has created a program adopting our once radical methodology to allow community workers to screen poor vision — it highlights how the status quo is changing,” Jordan Kassalow, MPH, OD, founder of VisionSpring and co-founder of EYElliance, said in the release. “It doesn’t get more mainstream than earning the imprimatur of WHO, and it turns a small initiative with success in certain markets to a globally accepted methodology that has huge scope to scale.”
The Training in Assistive Products (TAP) aims to assist governments, health care providers and other development organizations in incorporating basic vision care into primary health services and increasing distribution of reading glasses, which are available only through hospitals, vision centers and optical shops in many low- and middle-income countries, the release stated.
In addition to de-medicalizing reading glasses, TAP plans to improve access to other assistive technologies, including walking aids and emergency wheelchairs.
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