Main navigation

China has 6.6 million blind - many are children in deprived urban areas.

About the project

Children in China’s Dalian City can look ahead to long-term, quality eye care, thanks to a Seeing is Believing project with our partners, Orbis International.

Orbis is supporting the He Eye Hospital group to provide high quality eye care services including a new paediatric eye care centre. It is part of a sustainable programme to support the community long after the end of the three year project.

China has up to 6.6 million blind people – 15% of the world’s blind. Accessible, affordable, quality eye care is not generally available here. Treatments are expensive – often the cost of an average year’s income. Although most eye doctors are in urban areas, there is a lack of specialist training and equipment.

Here in Dalian, He Eye Hospital group will offer a ‘sliding payments’ system for surgery, based on ability to pay. Meanwhile, outreach services to other health care providers will help get children referred to the paediatric eye care unit early enough to treat problems and prevent blindness.

By the end of the project, we will have provided:

• A fully equipped, child-friendly paediatric eye care centre at He Eye Hospital (HEH) with trained eye care specialists, doctors, surgeons and nurses;
• Paediatric eye care services in cataract, glaucoma, refractive error, strabismus & ptosis by end of 2012;
• 16,000 children examined + 15,000 medically and 700 surgically treated;
• Network between HEH, hospitals and healthcare stations;
• Training for county doctors and community healthcarers at township and local levels - leading to 200,000 children screened and 14,000 treated;
• Screening for 120,000 adults and 6,450 other surgeries;
• High quality cataract surgery at He Eye Hospital up by 40% - 8,540 cataracts, 2,200 low-priced;
• A quality assurance system embedded in He Eye Hospital with benchmarks set.

Other projects in China