Royal project to halt avoidable blindness

200 health professionals and supporters from across the Commonwealth, who have helped saved the sight of 22 million people in five years through a project led by The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Trust, joined the Queen of England and the Countess of Wessex at Buckingham Palace to celebrate progress made towards eliminating avoidable blindness.

The five-year scheme was set up in 2012 by the Commonwealth Heads of Government, with work beginning in 2015 to curb avoidable blindness and empower young people to continue the work beyond 2020.

The trust has delivered antibiotics to more than 22 million people in Africa and the Pacific to help to combat trachoma, the most common cause of blindness in the world. It has also supported Malawi and Vanuatu to remove the risk of the disease, and both countries are on track to eliminate trachoma, according to the World Health Organisation.

In India, the trust has provided sight-saving surgery to more than 104,000 people suffering trachoma trichiasis, and given 19,200 treatments to prevent sight loss caused by diabetes. It also established screening services for babies at risk of retinopathy of prematurity – the leading cause of childhood blindness.

Dr Hillary Rono, the sole ophthalmologist working in his rural area of Kenya until 2015, has helped more than two million people with their eye health through support from the trust, funding apps like Peek, which helps ophthalmologists identify eye problems in Kenyan schools to save the sight of children before they develop.

The trust’s vice-patron, the Countess of Wessex, has been campaigning to improve eye health worldwide since 2000, and has travelled to three countries on behalf of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Trust to oversee its work. “I feel in a way that I have been your eyes,” said the Countess in a speech to the Queen, “having travelled to Malawi, Bangladesh and India to see the work of the trust first-hand, witnessing the ambitious initiatives being carried out in Your Majesty’s name, and ensuring that the intended legacy would be real and long lasting.”