Young Systems Leader: Keitumetse Thamane

Keitumetse Thamane began her eye health career at Botswana’s Ministry of Health in 2015. She acted as the key liaison between the National Eye Health Programme, Botswana-UPenn Partnership, and Peek Vision on the Peek Goodhope Pilot, which laid the groundwork for Botswana’s current national school eye health programme. Today, as a Programme Management Lead at Peek Keitumetse is committed to advancing global efforts to improve access to eye care, ensuring that no one loses their vision unnecessarily. She supports Peek’s partners in developing and implementing impactful eye health programmes aimed at addressing the eye health need in their communities, schools and workplaces.

Driven by a strong desire to improve people’s overall wellbeing, she leverages her academic background in Social Science and subsequent experience in eye health to drive innovative solutions that create lasting social impact. With experience working in low-resource settings she excels at designing programmes that are geared towards reaching people that would otherwise not readily access eye care services. She lives in Gaborone, Botswana and when she’s not working to improve global eye health you can find her enjoying a good book, or soft outdoor activities.

Key accomplishments include:

• Postgraduate diploma in Community Eye Health and Public Health from the University of Cape Town and Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Botswana
• Co-leading a school eye health Pilot in Botswana which laid the groundwork for Botswana’s national school eye health programme
• Supporting partners in design and launch of a community eye health programme during the pandemic COVID-19
• Working on a new initiative that is exploring how to improve scalability and reduce costs for Peek-powered programmes with the use of personal devices for screeners in collaboration with Dr Arunga’s Eye Hospital, Uganda
• Working with Clear Vision Collective Uganda to increase effective coverage of refractive errors in Uganda by establishing community-based eye health and the continuum of care through collaborative action