Standard Chartered Bank announces five new eye care projects for underprivileged

Standard Chartered Bank announced the launch of five new eye care projects to bring in innovation and strengthen the delivery of eye-care to the underprivileged between 2016 and 2019, with a donation commitment totalling to $1.6 million.

These projects will be delivered in partnership between the Bank, International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and leading eye-care NGOs across 15 states. In India, around 15 million people are thought to be blind with cataract as the most common form of avoidable blindness (62.6%), followed by refractive error (19.7%) and glaucoma (5.8%).

And yet 80% of all blindness is avoidable with the right treatment and care. There are up to 39 million people already blind across the world and more than 90% are in the developing world and deprived urban areas. “Eye-care is a critical component of health care. By building eye-care capacity in the country, we are improving health systems and infrastructure,” said Zarin Daruwala, Chief Executive Officer of Standard Chartered Bank, India. ‘Seeing is Believing’ is a global initiative to tackle avoidable blindness, and is a collaboration between Standard Chartered and IAPB and its membership of eye health organisations.

India is an important market in the Bank’s international footprint. The bank announced new $1 million partnership with Seva Foundation named “SCALE (Strengthening Capacity And Learning to Effectively Deliver Quality Eye Care)”. SCALE is set to build capacity of 50 hospitals across 15 states by addressing the areas of diagnostics, training and coaching, systems strengthening and demand generation.

The project is designed to boost the number of cataract surgeries – the largest cause of blindness in India. During the three years of the project period the partnership aims to accomplish 1.18 million cataract surgeries.

To foster development of new ideas with the potential for significant impact on the way eye health is delivered in India, $6 lakh grant has been awarded to four projects in the two categories – i) Back the development of innovations at initial pilot stage and ii) Support innovations that have undergone some initial testing and are looking to prepare themselves for scale-up.

The research-based innovation projects delivered by expert organisations will exploit the following areas: i) Developing low-cost, superior technology to treat cataracts by Aurolab; ii) On-the-go technology to make prescriptions easy by Aurolab in partnership with PlenOptika; iii) Employing digital devices to read books led by the DAISY Consortium iv) Converting smartphone into an eye testing device anchored by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Peek Vision Foundation.

These projects will run for a period of 12 to 18 months. Deploying a large number of projects dedicated to tackling visual impairment will help us support VISION2020.

Since 2003, Seeing is Believing in India has impacted the lives of over 12 million people by providing quality and cost-effective eye-care interventions through 92 vision centres across 11 states.