Simple Surgery to restore Sight to Ethiopians

Blinding trachoma undermines women's non-wage work, such as caregiving, water collecting and meal preparation, and in societies where women are engaged in waged enterprises, trachoma diminishes their economic capacity. This results in the community or family losing their productive labour and the women lose status. 

The World Health Organisation has set the year 2020 as the target to eliminate blindness resulting from trachoma. This is a difficult but achievable target. To get there, Orbis will implement inclusive community-based programmes that offer freedom from trachoma for all, but that also specifically and deliberately target women and girls.

Women must be reached with health education so that they can protect themselves, and their children, from trachoma. They must be reached with treatment to cure their current trachoma infection. They must have access to water and sanitation, and they must be able to benefit from eyelid surgery in a way that they can easily access it.

Unless trachoma control programmes target women for surgery, it will not be possible to reach elimination targets.

Surgery is an intervention that confers almost immediate relief to people living with the blinding form of trachoma, improving quality of life and enabling them to participate in the daily activities of their households. Although blinding trachoma is seen in both sexes, women suffer disproportionately from blinding trachoma.

The Orbis trachoma control programme ensures that access to surgery is available to all those who are suffering with the disease, whether they be men or women, distant or nomadic communities, or groups on the fringe of society. Achieving equitable access to surgery among men, women, and children requires surgical interventions that reflect the impact of gender on individual surgical uptake, community mobilization, and prevention of recurrence.