The Blind Leading The Blind?
Amity's Blindness Prevention And Special Education Work
"Why is it called Blindness Prevention Work? How do you prevent blindness?" These are questions She Hongyu, director of Amity's Blindness Prevention Division, and her colleagues frequently hear from outsiders. Few people are aware that blindness can indeed be prevented or reverted. In fact, 60% of all cases of blindness are preventable, including childhood blindness, blindness through glaucoma and trachoma and, most importantly, cataract blindness. 20% of all cases of blindness are curable, again mostly cases of cataracts. This is the good news.
The bad news is that with seven million blind persons in China, much remains to be done in terms of eradication of blindness and services for the blind. Every year, there are 450,000 new cases of mostly cataract-induced blindness, a trend that is partially linked to the aging of China's population. This means that in China, a new case of blindness occurs almost every minute of every day. Most of these cases stay untreated, as China's medical system is inadequate in dealing with the deluge. As a result, the number of blind persons is currently growing.
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Screening of potential patients in Yanghuping Township, Hunan Province |
To tackle the key problem of cataract blindness, Amity supports training and equipment for doctors and clinics at the county level, as well as subsidizes operations for particularly poor patients. The ultimate aim is to enable all county hospitals to perform quality cataract operations at an affordable price. (See "A Revolution..." and "In Focus: Blindness Prevention..." in this issue.)
For those whose visual impairment is not curable, Amity implements a variety of programmes, ranging from education for blind and visually impaired children to projects serving adults in need of survival skills and a livelihood. Amity subsidizes a number of blind students to attend special education schools. Not all blind children have access to special schools for the blind, though; in poor areas schools may be too scattered and boarding fees too expensive for most children. Under such circumstances, integrated education that educates blind and visually impaired children side by side with their sighted peers is the ideal solution. However, this requires training for the teachers involved. In cooperation with the Beijing-based NGO, Golden Key, Amity has been implementing an integrated education project in Inner Mongolia for a number of years now.
For blind adults, training is less academic and is geared towards slightly different needs. Apart from life skills that enable the blind to fend for themselves, such as washing, cooking, orientation and mobility skills, participants in rehabilitation programmes are taught income-generating crafts like making handicrafts or doing massage. In cases where blindness occurred only in adulthood, psychological counselling may also be part of the rehabilitation process. A particularly successful programme of this kind is the Luzhou Community-Based Rehabilitation project in Sichuan Province. Pu Guangyao, one of the beneficiaries of the project, overcame severe depression thanks to his new perspectives, and is now planning to establish a local Blind Association. While the phrase has generally been used in a negative sense, in Luzhou, the blind leading the blind clearly counts as a major success.
Apart from bringing relief to affected individuals, projects like community-based rehabilitation or integrated education are rather new in China and serve as examples that can trigger similar initiatives in other areas.
At the same time, they help to bring China's work for the blind closer to international efforts. China is part of Vision 2020, a WHO initiative to eliminate avoidable blindness in the world by 2020. With its support for poor patients and capacity-enhancing programmes, Amity contributes to bringing China closer to that goal. Finally, through providing training and financial support, international partners play an important role in Amity's blindness prevention work, most notably Christoffel Blindenmission (CBM), but also other specialist organizations like ORBIS.
