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Right to Sight was
founded as a non-profit organisation in the Royal College of
Surgeons in Ireland by eye surgeon, Dr Kate Coleman. It was
launched in March 2006 by former High Commissioner of the United
Nations, the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson and
actor Ralph Fiennes.
Right to Sight is not a traditional charity. We won't
duplicate the work of other charities.
Right to Sight is a unique collection of world experts
from the corporate sector, the eye care sector and the
government sector, brought together with the specific goal to
eliminate preventable blindness in the world.
Right to Sight is based on a human rights model of
development, acknowledging every person’s right to treatment and
prevention of blinding eye conditions.
Right to Sight has entered the field of international eye
care at a time when the industry has yet to exploit recent
technological and clinical advances, which make possible the
elimination of avoidable blindness. The Right to Sight
experts are working to overcome obvious deficiencies throughout
the eye care sector which have prevented a major scale up of eye
care solutions.
Right to
Sight believe that the following elements are crucial to
their mission:
•
Partnerships, especially public-private partnerships in the
corporate sector
•
Systematic and scaleable approaches, especially in relation to
refractive error and cataract surgery
•
Programmatic innovation
•
Co-ordination and competition to promote best practice
Right to Sight works as a facilitator and bridge through
partnerships, rather than developing a unique organisational
infrastructure, ensuring resources to patients are maximised and
in-country efforts are not duplicated.
Right to Sight seeks to collaborate with NGO partners
with excellent on-the-ground infrastructure, through which to
fund and channel training consultancies and unit support in
hospital management and eye care provision.
Right to Sight has to date partnered the most successful eye
care training programmes in the world, Aravind and LV Prasad, to
train and scale up its consultancies.
Right to Sight aims to work closely with members of the
governing Departments of Health and /or education in target
countries in order to facilitate sustainable national V2020 eye
care governance with funded national co-ordination.
Right to Sight has identified a social investment
strategy that provides easily identifiable humanitarian returns
for large scale corporate and foundation investment.
Right to Sight knows that there is no global shortage of
willing partners to fund the elimination 75% of world blindness,
which is preventable and treatable. That the resolution of the
crisis relies wholly on provision of human resources and
expertise in a scalable fashion.
Right
to Sight will provide these resources through partnerships
and collaboration. |
