Humanitarian
VISION 2020 LINKS: Retinoblastoma in Africa
The VISION 2020 LINKS Programme is part of the ‘VISION 2020: The Right to Sight’ global initiative to eliminate avoidable blindness [1]. The LINKS Programme works with overseas eye departments to help identify priorities and match their priority needs with...
A three-way partnership between Nigeria, Tanzania and Northern Ireland
VISION 2020 LINKS between Western Health and Social Care Trust (WHSCT), Altnagelvin Area Hospital, Northern Ireland with first ECWA Eye Hospital, Kano, Nigeria and now also with Mbeya Referral Hospital (MRH), Tanzania, have been beneficial to all three partners. From...
Building leaders for eye care in Africa: the COECSA-RCOphth VISION 2020 LINK
The VISION 2020 LINK [1] between the College of Ophthalmology of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa (COECSA) and the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCOphth) has been building leaders of eye care in Africa since 2008, when a Memorandum of Understanding...
Commonwealth nations join forces to prevent blindness from diabetes
More than 70 representatives from 10 Commonwealth countries (in the African, Caribbean and Pacific regions) and Indonesia gathered at a five-day workshop in November 2014 to establish district or national plans to reduce blindness from diabetic retinopathy (DR). The event...
VISION 2020 LINKS Programme: the Madagascar-Leeds LINK
Madagascar is a fascinating and culturally rich island which has an ‘exotic’ status in most people’s eyes. Yet it is among the poorest countries in the world. According to the World Bank, 92% of the population live on less than...
The Makassar-Dundee VISION 2020 LINK: a tale of two cities and two trainees
A resident’s view from Makassar My name is Hendra Kusuma, a final year resident (registrar) in the ophthalmology department at Hasanuddin University in Makassar, Indonesia. We have had a VISION 2020 LINK with Dundee (coordinated at the UK end by...
Students, soccer and slit-lamps in Ethiopia: a VISION 2020 LINK
Wachemo University campus. The Ethiopian Government is well aware of the brain drain amongst health workers and, to compensate, is training huge numbers of medical students, nurses and health officers in universities like Wachemo, a massive new University near Hosanna...
The Gambia-Swansea VISION 2020 LINK: building eye care services and international friendships
History The VISION 2020 LINK between the Sheikh Zayed Regional Eye Care Centre (SZRECC), Banjul, The Gambia and the Ophthalmology Department, Singleton Hospital, Swansea started in 2008 under the guidance of the VISION 2020 LINKS Programme at the International Centre...
VISION 2020 LINKS Programme: Reviewing the first ten years and announcing the new diabetic retinopathy initiative
The VISION 2020 LINKS Programme celebrates its 10th anniversary next month. Over the past decade it has achieved its objective of building capacity for eye care in developing countries, particularly in Africa, by establishing long-term training partnerships between institutions, known...
The invisible touch: a VISION 2020 LINK with Indonesia
Indonesia’s population, the world’s fourth largest, is spread across 6,000 inhabited islands. Whilst some areas (e.g. Kalimantan, Papua) are relatively sparsely populated, Java is the world’s most densely populated island, with twice the population of the UK in half the...
Guildford Rotary Eye Project
Guildford Rotary Eye Project (GREP) was conceived and implemented during the last 15 years with the sole aim to motivate and empower host Rotary clubs in India and Africa to resolve their problems with their own money. International partners in...
Building Capacity for Children’s Eye Care in Africa: the VISION 2020 LINKS Programme
This article follows the Correspondent News articles in the previous five print issues of Eye News [1-5] on the VISION 2020 LINKS Programme [6]. This article describes how African and UK eye care teams are working together to tackle childhood...
