British Council for the Prevention of Blindness’s Impact

The British Council for Prevention of Blindness (BCPB) is a very small charity funding blindness prevention education, research and mentorship programmes that benefit large and needy populations in low income countries, where help is needed most.  Our combined approach helps ensure that interventions are sustainable and learning is shared widely and can be cascaded through many health professionals to achieve the greatest impact.

Our 2017/18 impact at a glance

• Competency scores of trainees on a BCPB-supported surgery simulation training project in Sub-Saharan Africa have doubled in just three months
• After BCPB’s initial funding in 2012 of the Portable Eye Examination Kit PEEK to test and validate the technology, the Botswana Government are now screening and treating all schoolchildren for eye health issues. Read full report

Our 2018/19 impact at a glance

• BCPB’s support of emerging eye health professionals has led to high-achieving leaders in the field of blindness prevention, with our first ever Sir John Wilson Fellow Dr Ciku Mathenge from Rwanda this year receiving the International Humanitarian of the Year Award from Surgical Eye Expeditions.
• We have part-funded three students from Uganda, Nigeria and Rwanda with Boulter Fellowships to enable them to attend the 2018/19 Master’s Degree course on Public Health for Eye Care at The International Centre for Eye Health in London.  The course has enabled them to learn new skills and gain additional knowledge to work in eye health in their home countries. Read full report

Our 2019/20 impact at a glance 

• BCPB has supported a project in Tanzania to train primary health care workers through the WHO/UNICEF childhood management programme to detect eye problems in children. With the full support of the Ministry of Health in Tanzania, this work has now gone on to deliver training to over 3,000 frontline health workers which will have an impact on hundreds of thousands of children in the country. This training model can now be replicated in over 100 countries which use the same WHO/UNICEF protocols to train primary health care workers, benefiting thousands more children in the future. Read full report

Photo Captions

A – Health worker practising examination of a Tanzanian child’s eyes

B – Simulation surgical training

C – Diabetic retinopathy screening in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland)

D – Indian schoolgirl being screened for uncorrected refractive error