Seva Canada: A Solution in Sight

Moshi, Tanzania March 10, 2010
Penny Lyons, Seva Canada’s Executive Director

It is wonderful to be back in Tanzania. KCCO is humming with activity as guests arrive from all corners of the globe. The reason for all this activity is KCCO, together with the British Columbia Centre for Epidemiologic and International Ophthalmology and Seva Canada are hosting a gender and health meeting March 11-13 “Reducing Gender Inequity in Eye Care – Translating our Knowledge into Action”. Funding for this meeting was provided by a grant from the Canadian Institute for Health Research.  Participants include representatives from The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, the Tanzanian office of CIDA, the International Development Research Council, Seva partners from Tibet, Nepal, Egypt, India and Seva Foundation as well as participants from across Africa.

The goals of the meeting are to: share findings and effective techniques to reduce gender bias; share that knowledge at the national and international level; determine how to use these strategies, developed through eye care, in other health systems such as maternal and child health care; and to create new collaborations across regions and countries.

One of the key participants in this meeting is Herieth Mganga, KCCO’s gender and blindness coordinator. I had the opportunity to go into the field with Herieth yesterday. Our purpose was to interview Sentinels – women in the communities who are trained to find people who are suffering from debilitating eye conditions, like cataract, and ensure they receive the treatment they require.

We interviewed four Sentinels in the Hai District on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. These four women, Nkiraeshiwakwa, Hilda, Aziza and Raheima, have little formal education but have been trained by KCCO to detect eye conditions and to provide information and support to those needing services. They are an amazing group of women: dedicated, compassionate and determined. In the two years since the Sentinel program was implemented, the number of women, children and men accessing services has increased dramatically. They are treated with respect and admiration and now provide feedback to KCCO on how the program might be improved to reach more people in need.

While in the field we also met with some of the patients, found by the Sentinels and treated through KCCO. The patients, men and women alike, were grateful for the eye care provided and were glowing with praise and pride for the women in their community who had made it possible for them to see again.

Two-thirds of the world’s blind are women, yet they are the least likely to receive treatment. KCCO, our partner in East Africa, is the world leader on this issue and today I got to see their work first hand. Mollie, a Canadian donor, and I went with Margaret Kessy, KCCO’s Gender and Blindness Coordinator, to meet a group of village women called “Sentinels”.

These “Sentinels” are women who have committed to help find people with eye problems and encourage them to visit the Direct Referral Sites and get help. Margaret is working with 50 Sentinels in 14 different villages and is conducting a research project on the issue of gender and blindness. Today we met with 7 amazing women in a lovely village in the hills, surrounded by lush coffee and banana plantations.

Margaret was speaking with them about her research on the barriers to care faced by women and children and their role in helping people get treatment. She presented them with the materials they need to talk to patients about eye care, to collect information about their cases and to determine why they might refuse treatment. There are a lot of fears around eye surgery. Many people believe that if they get cataract surgery they will be given goats’ eyes, so you can imagine that there’s a bit of an uphill struggle to get people to hospital. According to Margaret, people may come to hospital if they have injured their eyes and are in pain, but with the painless white clouding of cataracts, they will not seek help — indeed, they likely don’t know that anything can be done to save their sight.

Today’s discussion, conducted in a mud-floored, windowless building in the heart of the village, was lively and full of warmth and commitment. All of the women clearly loved Margaret and felt comfortable asking questions and sharing ideas. Mollie and I were very impressed by their dedication to reach out to those who were very poor and who otherwise would not get eye care.

KCCO is a busy place. Next week there is a Childhood Blindness Workshop with people coming from Nepal, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Uganda and, of course, Tanzania. I’ll sit in on most of it, heading out part way through the week to see the trachoma work.

What a magical place this is. Kind, dedicated people doing great work and sharing their knowledge. I’m having a blast!

Heather