SDG 4: Increasing access to education by treating and preventing vision loss

Orbis knows there is a vital link between good vision and academic achievement. By fighting avoidable blindness and vision loss, we are working to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4 to ensure educational access and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Vision impairment in children makes learning difficult, leads to missed opportunities,

and causes lower educational outcomes. Research has shown that providing free glasses to children leads to better learning and has a bigger impact than other health interventions delivered in the classroom. Children also benefit economically from receiving glasses, with a positive ripple effect on the household, thereby creating brighter futures for entire families.

This study supported by Orbis in China, the See Well to Learn Well trial, revealed that providing a US$2 pair of glasses significantly improved children’s academic performance, with a greater impact than parental education or family income. Orbis’s ongoing SWISH (See Well to stay In ScHool) study is examining whether free glasses can help boost the proportion of rural Chinese children attending high school, currently less than half in many areas. The opportunity to attend high school, which opens the pathway to university, is a life-changing opportunity that has the potential to address major societal inequities.

Orbis’s landmark use of novel self-refraction technology in Mongolia is another example of our work to create eye health solutions for school children and boost their opportunity for educational success.

Due to the country’s low population density and vast distances between urban and rural areas, coupled with limited child eye health services, 90% of Mongolian children with refractive errors or poor vision go untreated. This directly affects their educational outcomes.

Orbis tackled this complex challenge by developing an innovative service model, providing an alternative to impractical, long-distance travel for families seeking simple eye exams. The program is the first-ever sustained use of self-refraction outside of research settings, allowing students to improve their vision with specially designed glasses under the supervision of a school physician or nurse

With support from the USAID Child Blindness Program (CBP), which has been delivering children's eye care services worldwide since 1991, and in close collaboration with the Mongolian General Agency for Education, Orbis screened 44,855 children for eye diseases and refractive errors and provided nearly 2,700 pairs of eyeglasses.

We also trained district ophthalmologists and school health providers in the self-refraction technique for detecting and treating visual impairment. Those children carrying out self-refraction and also receiving conventional service from ophthalmologists achieved identical vision outcomes, further demonstrating the efficacy of this tool in challenging, real-world settings.

Orbis has also implemented USAID CBP grants in Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Peru and Vietnam that led to the following achievements over a recent two-year period:

Orbis’s school-based vision screening program, REACH (Refractive Error Among CHildren), in India is another successful intervention, and our largest single global program in terms of beneficiaries helped.

India has some 270,000 children who are blind, the highest of any country in the world. Preventable causes of childhood blindness, according to a recent cost-benefit analysis of investing in child eye health, are responsible for an estimated US$41 billion in cumulative gross national income (GNI) loss.

Similarly, 9.3 million children across the country have visual impairment, with 75% of cases being avoidable, many due to refractive error. The REACH program aims to reduce visual impairment due to uncorrected refractive error among school-aged children and has been instrumental in improving the lives of over 5 million children across the country over 7 years.

In this breakthrough program, Orbis, along with our partners, sends teams of eye care professionals to schools to carry out vision screenings. Schoolteachers are taught to do screenings as well. Orbis and our partners prescribe glasses to children needing them, which the children can then obtain free of charge. Any child who is found to need eye surgery is referred to a local Orbis partner hospital for further examination and treatment.

To increase the uptake of services and encourage children to wear their prescribed glasses, children can bring their friends to help them choose their favorite frames. REACH also monitors whether children are wearing their glasses and increases awareness of eye health. Our studies of compliance reveal that some 70% of children are wearing their glasses on unannounced exams, among the highest reported figures. Children who need further examination or intervention are referred to the nearest Orbis-supported vision center. These centers ensure that remote and/or rural communities can access care close to home. As part of the commitment to reducing barriers to eye health, eye care teams make door-to-door visits where needed.

The program has been implemented across 13 locations in India, reaching nearly 25,000 schools, and providing over 135,000 pairs of glasses, more than 195,000 prescriptions, and over 2,400 surgeries.

Pursuing an evidence-based, data-driven approach underpins our work and demonstrates how Orbis and our partners are transforming lives and entire communities through our programs.

If you would like to learn more about how our work supports the SDGs, or are interested in funding any of the programs mentioned on this page, please email [email protected].