The defense of universal health coverage claims that everyone has the right to health and to receive quality eye care when and where they need it, without having to go through additional financial difficulties. For this reason, one of the objectives of Eyes of the world is to eliminate the barriers that hinder access to eye care.
One of these barriers is the difficulty that people with special needs or in situations of exclusion have to get around. And, in order not to leave them unattended, the Eyes of the Sahara project has organized home visits that bring eye care closer to their haimas.
To do this, a group of women from the local Basmat Khayr association has been previously trained by the Foundation to have basic notions about taking visual acuity to serve as a filter on a first visit and thus detect any problem or pathology, mainly cataracts.
So far, 73 home visits have been made, in which 138 people (93 women and 45 men) have been treated, of which 77 have been referred to consultations (63 women and 14 men), and four patients with older mobility problems have received a visit from the ophthalmology department technician who has traveled to their haima with the portable equipment.
This Eyes of the Sahara project has the support of the AECID (Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation).