Seva’s Drivers for Success: Training and Job Creation
There are millions in the world living in darkness, and not enough trained professionals who can provide care. Those who are qualified to provide care are unequally distributed and inadequately utilized. Sixty-eight percent of countries are home to only five percent of the world’s ophthalmologists, and these are usually concentrated in major cities, leaving a vast majority of people without access to eye care professionals.
But training enough new ophthalmologists to meet the rapidly growing need is neither economically nor practically feasible.
Introducing Seva’s Drivers for Success: Training and Job Creation.
Seva focuses on a two-pronged approach, aligned with recommendations by the World Health Organization and International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness.
First, we rapidly scale up the training and utilization of ophthalmic support staff. They can address the most basic eye health conditions at the primary care level, and refer patients who need more advanced care to ophthalmologists. This greatly reduces the workload for ophthalmologists, who can now focus on more advanced and severe cases.
Training ophthalmic support staff is also more cost- and time-effective than training ophthalmologists. Thousands of jobs are created in the process, having a multifold impact on the community.
Second, we improve the utilization of existing eye care personnel and systems, by training and mentoring teams of eye health providers for design, management and implementation of eye care programs. By leveraging our global network of eye care institutions and experts, and supporting a variety of strategic training initiatives, Seva continues to develop sustainable programs that bring high-quality, affordable eye care to the world’s most vulnerable communities.
Help us build sustainable eye care programs to serve the most vulnerable communities.
Visit seva.org/training
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