Eye Health Hero: Fatima Zehra

I feel great pleasure in nominating Fatima Zehra for her extraordinary expertise and experience in all tiers of community eye care. Her readiness in accepting challenges, to learn and grow all along are unmatched. She is the best choice for this award for her experience in the field, working with different state and non state actors in the country, for bringing new ideas, strengthening inter-organizational collaboration and partnerships.

Disability, poverty and helplessness of Visually Impaired pains me deeply, I love helping them.

I draw immense pleasure by making a difference into their lives, spreading smiles on their faces gives me inner peace and a spiritual boost. I love every single moment spent in the way of eye care, be it prevention, treatment or rehabilitation.

My motto is ‘working for the people with the people.’ I believe there is always a team effort behind the success of projects and organizational achievements. It’s truly an art and I love dealing with diversified people while managing projects.

-Fatima Zehra

She is proactive, committed, positive, well equipped with sound technical knowledge and background to provide rock solid support to the projects.

How is she making a difference for universal eye care:

Starting from the public sector she worked her way up from grass root level for the community towards a social organizer and optometrist during 2013 in Karachi. Due to her great interest in community work and high performance, she was promoted as a project manager to manage eye health projects (Pakistan Urban Pediatric Eye Care Project, Human Resource Development Program, Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Project at BHU level, LUMS Hyderabad, Global Trachoma Mapping Project) in the public sector supported by different INGOs like Sightsavers, Christoffel Blinden Mission and Fred Hollows Foundation.

During 2016, she got an opportunity to work in an INGO (Sightsavers) based in Islamabad where she managed Childhood Blindness Control project as a project officer and also contributed in others like Spectacles support, Strengthening Pakistan’s response to Diabetic Retinopathy, Low vision , Cataract Surgeries support and inclusive education. She managed to achieve overall project planned targets/milestones and timely submission to the donors. The project remained on-track during her whole work tenure. Her article was published as an optometrist in US Publication named, “Women in Optometry”, where her contribution as project manager was appreciated for the USAID funded projects.

In 2017, she joined an NGO (Al Baseer Foundation) working in the field of eye health in Karachi and managed both hospital based and outreach comprehensive eye care programs. She actively participated in ”Inclusive Eye Health ” training in Pakistan a universal agenda and got certified as a master trainer in Pakistan. She sensitized different eye health institutes on “Inclusive Eye Health Practices” by conducting workshops and training sessions.

Since 2019, she has been serving ‘VISION TRUST’ as a project manager, looking after the “School Health Program” efficiently. Currently, providing technical assistance the upcoming, “Optometry Internship Program” as a key resource for our projects of serving the less privileged.