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Blind people and their representatives queuing for essential emergency food kits. © SHAA/Sightsavers

Blind people and their representatives queuing for essential emergency food kits. © SHAA/Sightsavers

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Latest on Haiti

Since the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January this year, Sightsavers has supported our partner Société Haïtienne D'Aide aux Aveugles (SHAA - Haitian Society for the Blind) to provide 625 blind people with emergency food kits and cash grants for basic necessities and restoration of livelihoods. Cash grants were made to visually impaired people who previously received loans from SHAA for income generation activities, but have now lost their small businesses in the natural disaster that claimed over 200,000 lives.

Sightsavers has also supported SHAA's relocation to a temporary office while reconstruction is planned, and provided some essential equipment and office running costs. SHAA's office in Port-au-Prince was severely damaged, one part collapsed and the rest will be demolished as it constitutes a danger. SHAA also lost most of their Braille and sound library, several pieces of equipment (including a generator, inverter and batteries) and most of the rehabilitation and adapted education materials (Braille machines, white canes, wheelchairs) that were used by the rehabilitation field officers and itinerant teachers.

In April Sightsavers, CBM, ORBIS and PAHO/WHO supported a team of experts who visited Haiti to work with members of the Haiti CNPC (National Prevention of Blindness Committee) to complete an assessment of the situation of eye health facilities in the earthquake affected areas of Port Au Prince, Carrefour, Leogane, Petit Goave and Jacmel. The assessment team made recommendations which were taken forward at a meeting of Haitian, regional and international organisations in May in the Dominican Republic. This resulted in the formation of the International Collaborating Group for the Reconstruction of Eye Care and Inclusive Services in Haiti, and Sightsavers will play a key role in this group.

Over the coming years we will work with the group and our partners SHAA, CNPC, PAHO and the Caribbean Council for the Blind to develop services in Haiti including setting up three operating theatres in public health facilities, a spectacle lab and four vision centres. We will support training for three ophthalmologists, four optometrists, four refractionists, four dispensing technicians, two spectacle lab technicians, three low vision specialists, ten low vision counsellors, 360 primary health care workers, and two biomed technicians. We will provide support to strengthen Haiti's refractionist training programme, and continue to support the training for education and rehabilitation workers.