Community Eye Health for Strengthened Public Health Services

About the course

The aim of this course is to provide an overview of the principles of the control of blindness in general and an overview of the control of avoidable blindness in low and middle-income country (LMIC) settings.

Learning objectives

The Community Eye Health (CEH) course for Strengthened Public Health Services (SPHS) is for people working in prevention of blindness programmes in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The course is targeted for clinicians, educators, researchers or programme / project managers, coordinators, and administrators responsible for delivery of public eye health care services in LMICs. People starting to work in eye care in public health as clinicians, administrators or managers, or want to do research for postgraduate studies may find the training extremely useful.

After completing this course, participants will be equipped with the knowledge, skills and understanding of the principles and techniques of community eye health, including:

• Assessment of the eye care needs of the community
• Design and planning of eye care programmes
• Implementation and management of these programmes
• Monitoring and evaluation of these programme
• Development of human resources for eye care services

Course content

Weekly topics covered:

1. Conducting a Rapid Assessment of Eye Care Services (RAECS)
2. Basic epidemiology of visual impairment
3. IAPB Vision Atlas & RAAB repository vision loss data update
4. Global strategies to reduce the burden of vision loss (Vision 2020, Universal eye health, 2030 InSight, etc.)
5. Local strategies to reduce the burden of vision loss (Using RAECS)
6. Disease-specific vision loss control strategies (Cataract, refractive error, childhood blindness)
7. Disease-specific vision loss control strategies (Glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, trachoma, etc.)
8. Strategies for county, district, provincial and national eye care services
9. District eye care planning
10. Rapid Assessment of avoidable blindness
11. Other research strategies
12. Using information for planning and advocacy
13. Contemporary approaches in community eye health

Course cost

The full cost of the course is R5000 with discounts available as follows:

• Organisations are entitled to 10% discount when enrolling 5 or more participants.
• UCT staff are entitled to a 25% discount i.e. R3750. 
• All current full-time postgraduate students (proof of registration required) and graduate alumni from UCT, UWC, CPUT, and US (proof of graduation required) are entitled to a 50% discount i.e. R2500. 
• Current incumbents of the UCT-CEHI Volunteer Internship Programme are entitled to 100% fee waiver.

Registration

Interested candidates should submit this application form.

More Information

Read more: Community Eye Health for Strengthened Public Health Services
Email: cehi@uct.ac.za
Phone: (+27) 21 406 6039