What is Right to Sight?

Over 7 million Africans today have cataract blindness, curable with a 10 minute cataract operation. Millions more with developing cataracts have severe visual impairment, millions are blind due to lack of glaucoma treatment and many more millions need simple glasses to perform basic functions such as reading and sewing. Sub Saharan Africa has less than one ophthalmologist per million population.

Right to Sight is a not – for – profit organisation designed to help solve the shortage of ophthalmologists in Africa, permanently and sustainably, so that future generations will not suffer catastrophic needless blindness.

Blindness is much more common in Africa for two reasons: African cataract and African glaucoma.

Right to Sight is completely devoted to empowering African ophthalmologists to sustainably eliminate cataract and glaucoma blindness, in quality economically sustainable eye care systems that will provide full ophthalmic services including glasses. Free surgery for the poor is subsidised from private patient fees and training course fees in a Right to Sight hospital.

 African Cataract

A cloudy lens is called a cataract. The strong African sunlight causes the lens in the eye to cloud over at a much younger age causing opaque cataracts and blindness for one in 9 over the age of 50yrs. In the developed world, a cloudy lens is usually removed over the age of 65yrs and rarely, is dense enough to stop light getting into the eye, i.e. to cause blindness. Approximately 80% of people in Europe and the USA get cataract surgery routinely. Surgeons in the developed world perform an average of 6000 cataract operations per million population. In Africa, the average is only 243 cataract operations per million, despite the greater need than in cooler northern climates.

 

African Glaucoma

The African eye has been shown to be genetically at least ten times more likely to develop glaucoma than the caucasian eye. Glaucoma is a condition characterised by progressive weekness and thinning of the optic nerves, usually accelerated by high eye pressures. Glaucoma affects 4.5% of of the caucasian population and is know as The Silent Thief because it usually causes no symptoms until considerable sight has been lost. Glaucoma blindness can usually be prevented by screening, detection and pressure lowering treatments.