In 2016, we expanded our Hospital-Based Community Eye Health Program into Nepal. 

We first worked in Nepal in 1973, when we established the Nepal Eye Hospital in Katmandu, the country’s first full-fledged eye hospital. Before leaving the country, we played an instrumental role in establishing and/or strengthening five other eye hospitals in Nepal. 

After leaving to focus our blindness prevention programs in more urgently needed areas, our support was requested again. Today, we partner with Nepal Eye Hospital and Fateh-Bal Eye Hospital in Nepalgunj. 

During the pandemic, our work in Nepal focused on training community health workers, distributing hygiene kits, as well as providing health education to vulnerable and underserved communities. 

A third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2022 meant we had to delay some of our planned program launches and community outreach activities. It also prevented many patients from seeking care at our vision centres and partner hospitals. Our teams in Nepal took necessary preventive steps in the community and worked with our partner hospitals to enhance their infection prevention and control activities.

Through these mitigation measures, by spring 2022, we were able to successfully conduct door-to-door screenings in Nepali communities again, as well as encourage patients requiring treatment for eye conditions to visit a vision centre or hospital.

In 2022, we established two new Vision Centres in the community.

240,820

Eye exams

13,111

Sight-saving surgeries

16,186

Pairs of eyeglasses dispensed

17,866

People screened through door-to-door surveys

9,150

Students screened through school eye health programs

Learn more about our work in Nepal in 2022.

The knock on the door that changed everything

Sight and independence restored for Nepalese grandmother

Finding care in the community