International Women's Day : Sightsavers

Friday 8 March 2013 is International Women’s Day & in recognition of this I wanted to feature the work of Sightsavers.

Sightsavers is a charity which works to combat blindness in developing countries, restoring sight through specialist treatment and eye care.

The organisation also supports those who are irreversibly blind by providing education, counselling and training.

Sightsavers works with those who need help most - those living in poverty in the world's poorest countries.

This post celebrates a very special group of women, the lady health workers, who go door-to-door to provide access to free eye care services made available by Sightsavers and their partners. 

These women work tirelessly to help prevent avoidable blindness, travelling to some of the poorest, hardest-to-reach neighborhoods, striving to improve the health of their community. 

Hirabai and Jeba

Hirabai Bayle, living in the Dharavi slum in Mumbai, India, shares a tiny home with her mother, teenage son and four sisters. 

Her husband left her and her son and now Hirabai earns £13 a month to support herself and her son, selling bananas and stitching gloves in a workshop. 

20-year-old lady health worker, Jeba Ansari, visited Hirabai and diagnosed her as long sighted. 

By providing her with glasses, Jeba ensured that Hirabai could continue to work and remain financially independent. 

Sarwar

Inspired by a need to support her community, Sarwar Kausar became a health worker after finishing school. In countries like Pakistan, many women must be chaperoned to appointments with male health workers, which can be hard to arrange. Thousands of women go without examinations, suffering from eye health problems like cataract and trachoma. 

Lady health workers can visit women at home when male family members are away, passing on key medical advice to prevent eye diseases and infections. 

Samina

Having trained as a doctor, 33-year-old, married Samina decided to become a lady health worker, and eventually trained to become a Lady Health Supervisor (LHS) in the Karachi district of Pakistan. One of around 100,000 lady health workers in Pakistan, Samina overcame prejudice from within her own village, as a women receiving professional training, and now continues to work hard to free her community of eye health problems.

To read more about Sightsavers and the inspirational women helping other women, click here....