Your gift provided surgery for Mercy and Shelvin, who had both suffered from cataracts since birth. When you restored their sight, you gave Mercy hope for a better future for herself and her one-year-old daughter. See the heartwarming story of how Mercy and her family had their sight restored.

Vision impairment is a human rights issue. We’ve heard from you, and we know you care about the inequities that increase the rate of avoidable blindness. You don’t want to see women and girls overlooked because they aren’t prioritized for treatment. You don’t want to see children miss out on education because they can’t afford an eye exam or prescription eyeglasses. And you don’t want to see families facing blinding conditions such as trachoma because they don’t have access to clean water.

Your impact creates a world where no one suffers from blindness that could be treated or could have been prevented, regardless of gender, age or socio-economic status.

Our on-the-ground team in the countries where we work shifted our focus to understanding how we could contribute to the efforts of our hospital partners to provide supplies and education to help people protect themselves and their families.

Our donors were just as quick to provide help for people in need. We know that our donors are compassionate and want to help people who live in poverty, and can’t meet the basic needs of their families, including quality eye health care. These same people have been the most affected by COVID-19, and I am touched by the response of our donors. You have been by our side this entire time, saving lives with us. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for that.

You have supported our efforts to work with overwhelmed hospital and government partners to support health systems, ensuring that eye health won’t fall as a priority when this virus is under control. I’m hearing story after story from our international team about people who are so grateful that we’ve given them the tools they need to protect their families from COVID-19. You are giving people hope. You are making families strong. And you are making communities resilient.

Thank you. I hope you continue to be proud of the profound impact you are making during these unprecedented times for everyone’s health and well-being. We are honoured to have you by our side now, and into the future.

Aly Bandali
Former President and CEO

In 2019, we declared 159 villages and communities as avoidable blindnessfree (ABF) in India and Nepal, for a total of 1,150 since 2014. Since then we have declared villages ABF in Kenya, and we are on track to making similar declarations in Zambia and Ghana soon.

Our method of declaring villages avoidable blindness-free has been validated by L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, a designated collaborating centre of the World Health Organization. Our model is also recognized by the governments of the countries where we work.

Our vision centres are widely recognized as a reliable means to providing quality eye care services at the community level. Thanks to longterm donors and funding from grants, including Seeing is Believing (a partnership between Standard Chartered Bank and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness), we established 28 new vision centres this year, for a total of 143.

In Africa, we’ve adopted all aspects of the WHO-recommended SAFE (Surgery, Antibiotics, Facial cleanliness and Environmental management) strategy to eliminate trachoma. As a result, we have successfully reduced the prevalence of active trachoma to less than 5 per cent in the Sinazongwe district and in the Mkushi district of Zambia, and from a number of sub-counties of Narok county in Kenya. According to the WHO, a prevalence rate of less than 5 per cent is no longer a public health concern.

As part of the environmental management component of SAFE, we have drilled 175 new boreholes and rehabilitated over 100 dysfunctional boreholes to bring clean water to communities and minimize the spread of trachoma. We have also ensured local committees are in place to take responsibility for the maintenance of the boreholes and to manage fair distribution of water.

Operation Eyesight does not sell or trade donor names or contact information. If any errors or omissions have occurred on this page, please accept our sincere apology. Every effort was made to ensure this list is complete.

* Our board of directors in Canada is led by Mr. John Masters, Chair. We also have active boards of directors in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Kenya, Zambia and Ghana.