Access to quality eye care in China is in huge demand and a lack of services is creating a barrier for people pursuing a better quality of life. Sadly, in many countries around the world education programmes for rural eye care practitioners is scarce.

The ICEE mission is to work towards the elimination of avoidable blindness and visual impairment due to uncorrected refractive error and, as a consequence, reduce poverty. Achieving this goal requires more research into how to reach people in need in developing countries, especially those living in large populations and rural communities.
China has more than 20% of the world's population and of those 59% live in rural areas. In rural China, sadly there is a shortage of good quality refractive error services. The fact is widely attributed to a lack of infrastructure and appropriately trained human resources in regional areas.

Estimates show more than half of the population of China, a figure close to 54.5 million, have some form of vision impairment. Only 45% of school children in rural China have access to the eye care they need; this can often be as simple as an eye examination and correctly prescribed spectacles.

Refractive error includes conditions such as myopia and hyperopia which affect the vision of billions worldwide. Myopia alone affects more than 600 million Chinese people.

In 2011 ICEE saw the birth of a new project, funded by Optometry Giving Sight, targeted at eye care and blindness prevention amongst children in urban and rural areas of China. More than 4,000 school children aged from six to fifteen, braved freezing weather and snow to have their eyes tested for the very first time in Lechang, a rural county in Guandong Province China. The screenings were provided by local nurses, ophthalmic nurses and ophthalmologists trained in vision screening and optometric skills by ICEE.

In a 12 month period, project staff have conducted 5116 full eye examinations, prescribed 1432 pairs of spectacles and made 184 referrals. In ICEE training courses, a total of 31 eye care personnel completed training; 15 school nurses in four local high schools and 16 staff now working in local hospitals were trained in optometric skills.

Funders:

• ICEE
• Optometry Giving Sight
• Brien Holden Vision Institute