Ocular health interventions: alleviating poverty and promoting gender balance

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that “restoring someone’s sight is the single most cost-effective health intervention to reduce poverty” (World Health Organization, 2007). A Canadian-based non-profit organization, RS Foundation, through its ocular procedures program, can support this statement through activities addressing a major problem that is entirely preventable. In a span of five years, they have helped to provide 11,505 men, women and children in poverty with the gift of eyesight, supporting them to become functional and productive members of society. The program adopted a Freirean approach (Freire 1996) to both research and an active medical initiative reaching the suffering in a literal, medical manner, and creating partnerships with medical personnel, stakeholders and researchers. Numerous studies emphasize the need for eye surgeries in the most vulnerable societies and report increased results in the physical, economic and psychological well being of beneficiaries. While taking Five Factors Contributing to Continued Blindness into account, these findings have been corroborated by basic level evaluative methods conducted for this article, including feedback received from implementing partner agencies and informal interviews with beneficiaries. RS Foundation’s program has shown that ocular surgeries can aid in the alleviation of poverty, especially amongst those members of society who are the most vulnerable, including women and girls.