SightFirst China Action
Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) pioneered a national eye care project with the Chinese Ministry of Health, the National Institute of Hospital Administration, and the Chinese Disabled Person's Federation: the SightFirst China Action (SFCA) project. For over twenty years, this project has been working to address the eye care needs of China.
While accessibility and affordability of eye care services have dramatically improved in China over the last two decades, the country’s immense size and the density of its population require more sustained action.
Advancing eye care
SFCA I was launched in 1999 with an LCIF SightFirst Grant of US$15.38 million.
Phase I, which was completed in 2002, supported 2.1 million cataract surgeries and established surgical eye units in 104 rural counties.
In 2002, a SightFirst grant in the amount of US$15.5 million was approved for Phase II of SFCA. During this phase, nearly 3 million cataract surgeries were performed and eye care infrastructure was strengthened by creating secondary eye care units at hospitals in 200 counties.
Phase III of SFCA was launched during Lions World Sight Day in 2011. Several SightFirst Grants, totaling US$5.98 million, were approved to support this phase. During Phase III, an ambitious program was launched to verify the achieved elimination of blinding trachoma in mainland China, to increase the availability and accessibility of professional vision rehabilitation centers in Liaoning and Guangdong provinces and develop a regional training program model in Liaoning province.
Phase IV began in 2018 with the signing of a five-year cooperative agreement between the National Institute of Hospital Administration and LCIF. This phase focuses on the main issues emerging from national reports and available data: addressing uncorrected refractive errors by supporting the creation of sustainable refractive services at the country level, assessing the availability of services for diabetes and diabetic retinopathy care, and increasing the quality of cataract surgery outcomes in county-level hospital through provincial hospital monitoring.
Partnerships and developments
As the first international volunteer service organization in China, Lions International is proud that this partnership created one of LCIF’s largest and most successful SightFirst programs.
Today the work to prepare the national assessment of diabetes and diabetic retinopathy care includes training provincial teams. The partnership also includes the Beijing TongRen Hospital to improve the quality of cataract surgeries.
Currently, fieldwork is under review. Since changes have been made to the ministry structure, the best national counterpart to implement the project must be identified.
Vision for all
As one of the Foundation’s most notable programs, SightFirst funds efforts to fight the major causes of preventable and reversible blindness and provide services to persons who are blind or have a visual impairment. This is accomplished through the support of eye health care delivery systems, training and infrastructure development.
