VOSH Southeast Saly, Senegal
Eye Clinic March 22nd-26th, 2025
The VOSH-SE team of 21 people joined Mame Dabo, our amazing Senegalese sponsor and coordinator, and her family to organize and host a 5 day primary eye care clinicin Saly, Senegal, from March 22-26, 2025.
From the location of the clinic to the food and lodging and the transportation, our hosts incredibly took care of every detail.
The Community Center was a perfect location for a free eye clinic where the sense of community was greatly appreciated! The support of local individuals to register patients and to provide translation was incredibly helpful for the success of the clinic.
Almost 3400 people had their eyes examined and most received reading glasses, glasses to enable them to see in the distance, occhiali da sole, diagnosis of eye diseases such as glaucoma and cataracts and medications for glaucoma, occhio secco, allergic conjunctivitis and several other eye diseases. New prescription glasses will be dispensed to 834 people over the next month; these glasses are provided by OneSight EssilorLuxottica Foundation
Changing Life Through Lenses program.
One may ask how a short term mission is effective. There are so many answers to that question: providing a pair of glasses that an individual may take home with them can literally be life-changing as that person may now be allowed to work and to provide for
their family or to be able to see to sew or to read, or to be able to now learn in school. Eye drops provide relief of eye pain and intense itching which can also threaten vision. Safety eyewear helps to protect one’s only usable eye and an annual supply of glaucoma drops helps to prevent irreversible blindness.
Our hope for the future is that the patients who have been identified as in need of follow up care are able to access it through the local ophthalmology clinic. We have the goal of returning annually to provide the necessary primary eye care, to establish a
relationship with local, skilled eye surgeons and to provide financial support for cataract surgeries and follow up care, to obtain and ship equipment necessary for the clinic, to continue to provide prescription and non-prescription eye drops and glasses, and to help train local interested health care professionals.
So many individuals and organizations are to thank for the success of this mission in Saly, Senegal. We are grateful to several individuals who have generously contributed financially and to the following organizations for donation of glasses, occhiali da sole, eye drops, farmaci, use of equipment or financial support: CooperVision, Alcon Cares Medical Missions Program, imprimis rx (A Harrow Company), Americares, Allina Pharmacy,
EyeGanics, RestoringVision.org, Nazionale Vision, VSP Vision, Marchón, VOSH Internazionale, North Star Optical, LLC, PlenOptika and OneSight EssilorLuxottica Foundation. We also appreciate the organizational support from VOSH Southeast.
Thank you also to the communities of Saly and Mbour for use of the facility, to the local translators, to Dr. Sow for his professional support, to Mariama for the delicious and
nutritious food, to Karim Dabo for transportation, and especially to Mame Dabo for her
incredible spirit and guidance throughout our mission and for having the vision of what
could be possible to support her community.
Key facts
● Globally, almeno 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment. In at least 1 billion of these, vision impairment could have been prevented or is yet to be addressed.
● The leading causes of vision impairment and blindness at a global level are refractive errors and cataracts.
● It is estimated that globally only 36% of people with a distance vision impairment due to refractive error and only 17% of people with vision impairment due to cataract have received access to an appropriate intervention.
● Vision impairment poses an enormous global financial burden, with the annual global cost of productivity estimated to be US$ 411 billion.
● Vision loss can affect people of all ages; tuttavia, most people with vision impairment and blindness are over the age of 50 anni.