A note from Seva's Executive Director about COVID-19
Seva and partners have established 71 Primary Eye Care Vision Centers globally. These provide an entry point to eye care, an extension of eye hospitals with 1-3 trained staff who perform eye exams, refraction, glasses, and referral to hospitals.
Seva and partners provide formal and informal training of ophthalmologists, allied ophthalmic personnel, and administrators. Seva and partners have developed and expanded Eyexcel and supported training of 662 clinicians and administrators.
Seva focusses on eye care screenings for children in and out of school and provides surgery, glasses and treatment with a continuum of care.
Seva's focus is on patient care with prevention, detection and follow-up; information management; and distance learning. Seva has installed electronic management systems in more than 20 hospitals across India.
Watch the video above to see how patients regain not just their sight, but also their independence and their future.
For impoverished people in the developing world, blindness or debilitating visual impairment are effectively a life sentence. Isolation from work and community activities steals their potential contributions. A loss of sight for one can trigger an economic crisis for the family.
Today, almost 650,000 Guatemalans suffer vision loss from treatable conditions. Yet most serious visual impairment can be solved with a simple 15-minute operation for cataracts — or a pair of eyeglasses. Existing service networks are not efficient enough to meet the demand. Travel to distant cities is an insurmountable barrier to the rural poor, including indigenous persons.
Affordable treatments exist for cataracts and other causes of preventable blindness. The problem is access to treatment.
The Global Sight Initiative (GSI) is Seva’s proven eye care delivery model comprised of collaborating international NGOs, mentor institutions and mentee hospitals. Each member plays a pivotal role in reaching our shared goal of eliminating preventable and curable blindness. One distinctive feature of the GSI is the use of trained paraprofessionals. This frees ophthalmologists to focus on surgeries and other complex procedures. The regional GSI care systems will increase access to eye care. Expanded efficiency and productivity will build capacity … and meet the need in Guatemala.
With $100 MILLION, Seva's GSI model can be scaled in Guatemala. It will not only restore and preserve sight for Guatemalans who suffer from cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and other increasingly common conditions but also give them back their dignity and their independence. The impact on their families and communities would be multi-fold as they become able to study, work and lift themselves out of poverty.
Together with our partners, Seva is poised to eliminate preventable blindness in Guatemala within ten years. The blueprint we create will equip us to scale our evidence-based Global Sight Initiative (GSI) throughout Latin America.
A $1 MILLION INVESTMENT SUPPORTS SEVA in planting the initial seeds of a new local eye care system in Guatemala by establishing three PECVCs in three different departments of the Sur Occidente area:
A $5 MILLION INVESTMENT SUPPORTS SEVA in establishing the first local node in the national eye care system – a local eye care system serving the Sur Occidente area:
A $10 MILLION INVESTMENT SUPPORTS SEVA in creating the first regional node in the national eye care system – an eye care system serving both the northern and southern parts of the Occidente region.
Visualiza Clínica Médica Oftalmológica, known simply as Visualiza, is a leading eye hospital in Guatemala and the rural Petén region. Visualiza works to prevent and cure blindness caused by major conditions including cataract and refractive errors. Founded in 1997, the hospital has been actively refining its unique community-oriented low cost and free service system. Although Visualiza employs only 2% of the nation’s ophthalmologists, the organization performs over 20% of all cataract surgeries in Guatemala. Visualiza’s hospitals provide private care alongside free vision services for their low-income patients.
Seva has been partners with Visualiza since 2006. Seva works with Visualiza to spread their model of universal access to service. Through the Global Sight Initiative, Visualiza serves as a mentor to five mentee hospitals in Latin America. Through Focusing Philanthropy’s World Sight Day campaigns, Seva provides direct support for Vizualiza's clinical services and school screenings that help reduce avoidable blindness across Guatemala and restore sight to some of the country's most vulnerable populations, including women and children in rural communities. Seva is committed to augmenting Visualiza's service capacity with a focus on local staff development and management training. With Seva's ongoing support for skill-based training, Visualiza has become a resource to improve other eye care centers in Latin America.
Even in high-income countries like the United States, millions of people do not have access to proper vision care. One group that suffers disproportionately from avoidable blindness and visual impairment are Native American communities. Seva seeks to address this injustice through our American Indian Sight Initiative. For over thirty years, we have worked to improve the health and wellbeing of the indigenous people of the U.S.
In addition to these partners, we support capacity building in over 90 hospitals around the world.
Guatemala
Dominican Republic
Haiti
Mexico
Nicaragua
Paraguay
Peru
United States
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