Summary

Program goals

Because eye sight is not a potential health problem which leads to mortality, state and non-state actors tend to pay less attention on this problem than those are highly-related morbidity and mortality. However, this problem can negatively impact on individuals, families and society in terms of socio-economic, health and livelihood. Furthermore, these groups of people tend to face difficulties to accessing health care services, mainly those who are poor and vulnerable or live in hard-to-reach areas. The initiation of these programs is to improve and/or eliminate eye sight problems among Cambodian through an increased access to quality eye care services for people, mainly those are under-served and underprivileged.

Key program components

Eye Care Foundation Cambodia works closely with Ministry of Health, National Program for Eye Health, and the University of Health Science in Cambodia to improve human resource capacity and the delivery of eye care services at public facilities.

Professional training: 

Every year, a group of students is selected to attend ophthalmology courses to become professionals at different levels of public facilities. At residency training, ECFC provides some financial support to University of Health Science to organize training course on ophthalmology. At referral hospitals, ECFC provides training equipment and support for the organization of training of trainers (TOT) courses on secondary eye care such as outpatient consultation, inpatient treatment, eye surgery, outreach screening and refraction. At the health centers, TOTs implement training courses on primary eye care for health center staff and village health volunteers.

Contracting for services: 

Eye Care Foundation Cambodia provides surgery equipment and spectacles to public facilities in exchange for the provision of secondary eye care services. Eye consultations at contracted facilities are provided free of charge, however, other services such as surgery, spectacles and medicines are charged at subsidized prices that are agreed upon between health providers and ECFC. Health providers are responsible for judging a patient's ability to pay the service fees. Those who can afford to pay are charged the full fee, while the ECFC covers those unable to pay. The revenue from user fees is used to cover the operational costs of service delivery. For instance, the 35 USD per case of cataract surgery is used to pay for surgery equipment, provide incentives for the team of surgeons, and offer transportation for the poor at rates between 5 and 15 USD. Eye care services delivered at contracted facilities are less expensive than those provided at private facilities. For example, cataract surgery costs 35 USD at the contracted referral hospitals, while private clinics charge 200 USD or more. The secondary eye care services are normally carried out at referral hospitals, however, these services also offered at the community level through Eye Camps or Eye Care Mobile. ECFC conducts regular monitoring activities to ascertain the progress of eye care services.

Health education: 

At the health centers, eye health education is integrated with other outreach activities such as vaccination, maternal child health, sanitation and hygiene, and micronutrient supplementation. The trained health center staff and village health volunteers are responsible for the provision of basic eye care services, recognition and referral of complicated cases, and provision of eye care education in the community. ECFC provides incentives to public health staff to conduct outreach screenings.