Effectiveness of community-based eye care: process and considerations

Abstract

In the past three decades, there have been multiple examples of involving community-based health workers and volunteers in the delivery of eye-care interventions. However, while in some settings the benefits have been strong and demonstrable, in other settings questions and concerns have been raised.1–3 In addition, there is poor evidence for the effectiveness of task shifting in eye care in low-resource settings. From this perspective, we would like to congratulate Kieran O’Brien and colleagues, the authors of the Village-Integrated Eye Workers (VIEW) study published in The Lancet Global Health,4 who employed a cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) design to determine whether the diagnosis of corneal abrasions and the provision of prophylaxis by trained community-health volunteers reduced the incidence of corneal ulceration in Nepal.