Category: Messages

Despite being a relatively new NGO, and a new player in the field of blindness prevention in Bangladesh, the Child Sight Foundation has been doing truly excellent and innovative work over the last few years. One of the strengths of CSF is that the staff come from a range of backgrounds, and they bring their expertise and experience to bear on how activities are planned and organized, coming up with new and innovative ideas and solutions. The staff now have a wide range of skills, ranging from interviewing the parents of children who are blind and the blind children themselves, conducting house to house surveys to identify children who are blind, training key informants, networking with an extremely wide range of organizations, agencies and service providers, running national workshops, using qualitative information to develop and field test health education materials, and maintaining a database of the blind children they have identified. Indeed, developing and refining the key informant method for finding blind children in the community (and training other organizations in use of the method) is CSF�s the main achievement, and over the two years covered by this report CSF identified 2,846 blind children. Many of these children were referred to partner eye hospitals for sight restoring surgery – the vast majority of these children would have remained blind without the tireless and committed work of CSF staff.

I wish CSF all the very best as they continue in their excellent work, and I am sure that when the time comes to the next report in 2 years time that they will have even more new initiatives to report!

Clare Gilbert MBChB, FRCOphth, MD, MSc
Acting Head, International Centre for Eye Health
Reader in International Eye Health
International Centre for Eye Health,
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London.

It is with immense pleasure that I write this report as the President of Child Sight Foundation, a role that I am very honoured to carry out. The undertaking of this report highlights the organisation’s commitment to its stakeholders and transparency. It is also an opportunity for CSF to inform people about its achievements and future plans.

CSF has achieved outstanding results in its short three year life span. It gained registration with the NGO Affairs Bureau in October of 2004 and has been able to serve blind children on a broader platform.

The main aim of the organisation is to serve the estimated 40,000 blind children in the country, to provide them with treatment and where this is not possible, rehabilitation. The aim is to encourage them to be independent and full members of society. The organisation also seeks to assist the primary care givers of blind children by listening to them and operating in ways, which are conducive to best serving the needs of these two primary stakeholder groups. The organisation is currently in the process of developing a comprehensive programme for blind children, a model in one district, which will address their needs and hopefully be replicated in other parts of the world.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Executive Committee, the management team and staffs who contributed greatly to the continuous growth and success of CSF.

I am also grateful to the various regulatory bodies such as the Social Welfare Ministry, NGO Affairs Bureau, government and non-government organizations and local and international donors for their support, which has contributed to the success of the organisation.

I sincerely pray to the Almighty Allah to grace us with His blessings in our continued efforts in achieving success in the future.

Prof. A H Syedur Rahman
President
Child Sight Foundation

It was a privilege for me to be closely involved in the formation of this unique organization in 2002. Along with my friends, well wishers, professional colleagues and a committed team of young people (the CBPB team) we wanted to change the situation of blind children in Bangladesh and establish the rights of blind children to treatment, education and other essential services to participate as equal citizens of this country.

We, as a small team in CSF, started with a vision of a new world where no child is denied his or her human rights because of blindness, but we were soon challenged by the limitation of resources, by the needs for capacity building and most importantly by the fact that very little is actually known and documented on the situation of blind children in Bangladesh. There was a widespread denial among policy makers and service providers even about the mere existence of blind children � no data were available even on essential facts like �how many children are blind in Bangladesh?

Our work actually started in April 2000; it is now five years since I came to Bangladesh after undertaking my Clinical Ophthalmology training in Glasgow and Bristol and Community Eye Health training in London. The purpose of my two month visit in 2000 was to undertake a feasibility study for the International Centre for Eye Health (ICEH) in London so that the First National Study on Childhood Blindness in Bangladesh could be planned and implemented to inform policy makers about the number and causes of childhood blindness in the country.

During this long journey over the last five years, I had the opportunity to work with the CBPB and CSF teams, to visit every district of Bangladesh and to personally meet over 2,000 blind children. I was motivated and encouraged by many social and community workers, government officials, NGO staffs, ophthalmologists and policy makers who were keen to work for blind children in Bangladesh.

The journey of CSF taught us that the social capital in Bangladesh is well developed. We strongly believe that with this enormous social capital, motivating leadership and faith in the ability (not disability) of every citizen in this country- Bangladesh can create a wonderful example for many developing countries that are struggling to establish the rights of children (with or without blindness and disability). CSF strives to be at the forefront of the global movement against avoidable blindness-the VISION 2020 initiative, as well as in the movement to establish child rights.

Dr M A Muhit
Founder President
Child Sight Foundation and
Clinical Research Fellow
International Centre for Eye Health,
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.