Development Ratings

? Supporting renewed self-sufficiency: People affected by uncorrected refractive error would have had their standard of living reduced by dependency on others for some or a major part of their daily lives. Spectacles would alleviate this dependency and the economic effects for the patient and carer.

Supporting employment opportunities: The concept that lack of glasses could reduce a person’s employment options would be unheard of in the developed world and yet in developing countries it is a serious effect of eyesight deterioration, whether through ‘normal’ or poverty-derived causes.

Supporting educational opportunities: Being unable to see clearly is obviously a severe detriment to children attempting to learn to read and write. Functionally blind children would increase the demands on a community for their immediate care as well as later when they are less able to contribute economically to society.

Increasing in-country capacity: Development of optometry capacity will allow health practitioners to repeat the benefit of eyesight testing and spectacle dispensing to greater numbers of people than Vision Aid Overseas can see in the short period of the projects. The workshops will allow the manufacture of spectacles to order for powers that have not been supplied through donations.