Global Health Delivery Programs at a Glance
Quality Patient Care
By partnering with local eye clinics, our programs provide consistent, high-quality, and sustainable health care with good visual outcomes. All eye care services are provided year-round and are comprehensive, including examinations by local eye doctors, diagnosis and care for treatable conditions, patient education, and preventive care. Our outreach efforts extend to individuals in villages near the clinics, in some cases including villages seven or more hours from a clinic. These patients are provided with regular follow-up care by our outreach teams throughout the year, and postoperative outcomes and quality of care are closely monitored. We eliminate patient barriers to care by fully funding surgeries, bringing eye care services to the patients, providing transportation to the eye clinic for surgery, and educating communities about blindness prevention. All eye care and surgeries are provided by local eye doctors, and Unite For Sight's partner ophthalmologists are highly skilled and trained to provide the most advanced types of cataract surgery (SICS and Phaco).
Supporting Local Eye Clinics
We develop and enhance the quality and productivity of our partner eye clinics by sponsoring professional development and continuing education opportunities for our partner ophthalmologists and ophthalmic nurses. We mobilize eye care professionals throughout the world to work collaboratively; visiting ophthalmologist and optometrist volunteers provide one-on-one mentoring and training for local eye care professionals, and we encourage the donation of quality equipment to our partner eye clinics. We engage, inspire, and train non-eye care professionals to participate as Global Impact Fellows to support and assist our partner eye clinics. These volunteers receive training in eye health, public health, and international development. Additionally, while immersed in Unite For Sight programs, the Fellows gain skills to become leaders in global health.
Promoting Sustainability
Our partner eye clinics have a sustainable business model and do not rely on Unite For Sight's support to operate or be locally competitive. We help existing eye clinics develop outreach infrastructure so that care can be provided to patients living in extreme poverty. Meanwhile, the clinic's private business continues as an enterprise independent of Unite For Sight-supported outreach programs. This strong base of independence and sustainability comes from good business practices, which is why Unite For Sight partners exclusively with existing eye clinics that also provide care to private paying patients.
Empowering Communities
We provide grants to local eye clinics to hire outreach staff, comprised of local ophthalmic nurses, optometrists, coordinators, and outreach van drivers. We fund local eye clinics to train and employ Community Eye Health Workers who work daily in their local villages to eliminate patient barriers to eye care. In addition, restoring a person's sight creates job opportunities. Blindness in the developing world has a significant negative impact on household employment, income, and education. Blind individuals are often unable to contribute to the family income, and children may have to sacrifice their education to serve as caregivers for blind relatives. Eliminating preventable blindness has the potential to boost productivity for individuals, families, and communities.
Network of Knowledge
Unite For Sight develops communication channels between eye clinic partners located on three continents to enable the exchange of information about proven effective practices and lessons learned from experience. Most of the eye clinic partners also attend Unite For Sight's Global Health & Innovation Conference, which further encourages learning and innovation by sharing information and best practices with 2,000 conference participants across all disciplines of global health and international development.
Transparent & Accountable
We run a highly effective and efficient organization, and we ensure that 100% of all donations go directly to providing eye care for patients living in extreme poverty in the developing world. The cost of a sight-restoring cataract surgery ranges from $18 to $100, depending on the country location, local availability, and the nature of surgical supplies.