Executive Summary :
In the selected two districts of the northern part of Bangladesh (Rangpur and Gaibandha District), there is huge unmet need for eye care services, and there is no major player to cater to this unmet need of the community. To carry out this project, Deep Eye Care Foundation will work with ORBIS International to expand their services and as a result, will contribute to the prevention and reduction of avoidable blindness by making low cost quality eye care services accessible to the Char population and the surrounding rural and underserved urban populations of the Rangpur and Gaibandha Districts. The strategies of this project will be capacity development of Deep Eye Care Foundation, located in Rangpur district to provide quality eye care services and conduct outreach programs in the hard to reach and underserved Chars; development of eye health education and behavior change communication activities; development of strong institutional capacity of the support partner to achieve sustainability within the project period; and the conduct of research to measure the impact of the project in improving the quality of life of the char population. To make eye care affordable to the population, the project will support the local poor patients with reduced or subsidized fees and will support the ultra poor patients with vouchers to make cataract surgery and other services completely free for them. The key disease focus of the project will be on cataract and refractive error. The project will be for four years, from October 2008 to September 2012.
