We, a group of international eye care organisations, welcome the draft 14th GPW and the explicit recognition of eye health under the ‘health service coverage and financial protection’ strategic objective, outcome 4.1 the need to scale up equity and access to services. We commend the secretariat for the consultative process and look forward to continuing to engage with the WHO going forward.
1.1 billion people are blind or have a visual impairment that could have been prevented or is yet to be addressed. Without increased action, this number is projected to increase to 1.8billion by 2050. Given the magnitude of the global eye health challenge, which touches every country of the world and has 90 percent of the burden within low and middle income countries, eye health must be considered an essential part of UHC and a key indicator of the effective functioning of a health system.
We welcome the development of the monitoring framework and emphasize the need to monitor not just service coverage and financial protection but also quality when measuring UHC. Effective coverage is considered the gold standard for measuring service coverage and effective and equitable coverage at the health-system level.
We therefore welcome the inclusion of effective refractive error coverage (eREC) in the monitoring framework. It tracks how a health system functions across the life course. Everyone, at some point in their life will require refractive error services, the majority of whom can be treated with a simple pair of glasses. These services can be provided at primary care which aligns with the aim to radically reorientate towards primary care .
In 2022 baseline figures for the eye health coverage indicators were launched. eREC was at 36%, meaning at least two thirds of people aren’t receiving the quality services they need. Including this within the GPW14 monitoring framework functions as an indicator not only for equity in access to NCD services but also highlights the importance of the inclusion of eye health services within health systems.