Kwale District Eye Centre - Kenya

Mission Statement

To empower the community by providing comprehensive, affordable and accessible eye care.

Vision

An empowered community, accessing eye care services in which the right to sight and equal opportunities for the sighted and visually disabled are realised.

1 - Report Highlights

• Operations at all time high
• New project manager
• Awareness creation remains priority
• New fundraising venture a success
• 4 WD vehicle must be replaced

To our delight more people continue to take up our services, especially those with cataract. This remains the commonest cause of blindness in Kwale District. The biggest barrier to people reaching care and having their sight restored is their inability to access that care. It is crucial that we continue to reach people in the least accessible areas of the district.

2 - Awareness and Fundraising

The KDEC Charity Shop and Information Centre opened in Diani Beach Shopping Centre.

Thanks especially to one donor who covered the rent and electricty for the first six months and the hard work of Jan King and Luciana Parazzi this is doing well.

The picture on the right shows the Kwale District Eye Centre Charity Shop

3 - Community Based Programme

The backbone of KDEC’s activities, this programme continues to encourage the community to own needless blindness as their problem to prevent and solve.

The new project manager goes into the field monitoring screenings, visiting rehab clients, schools with children with low vision integrated amongst their sighted peers and experiencing the challenges, which face our community based workers.

Five thousand people were screened in 78 outreach clinics. These are less clinics compared with the same period last year, but more people came.

696 of the cataract operations performed so far this year were referred directly by the community based programme.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for this project is creating awareness on eye disease and what to do about it and what visually challenged people are capable of; both adults and children.

Training community groups is a very important part of our work. Village Health Committees, 4 womens’ groups and 35 traditional healers were trained in this way.

Education officials, school contact teachers and parents of children with low vision were trained on many aspects of low vision.

And training of individuals with special needs is very important.

51 irreversibly blind ladies stayed at KDEC for a week and were trained in specific needs and household chores.

The Low Vision Department

This was decorated by Pietro Rampinelli (a local prominent artist) and his team.

It is now much more cheerful as you can see in the picture on the right.

4 - Outreach Safaris

Because of the good quality surgery associated with KDEC, we are constantly approached to help in places where there are inadequate eye care services.

449 operations were performed on outreach, of which 311 were cataracts.

We have more requests to help planned for the remaining half of the year provided we have additional funds to replace the 4WD.

5 - Staff

Rosemillia Onyango left for further studies abroad.
Thuweba Mohamed has taken over as Project Manager.

Training

• Administrator 6 weeks at Aravind Eye Hospital, India. Management training, systems development hospital administrators.
• Accountant 1 week in financial management for NGOs Nairobi.
• Medical Director, Project Manager, Accountant and CBP Manager attended SSI partners workshop Nairobi.
• Nurse in-Charge and Theatre in-charge, both enrolled community nurses, began the Kenya Registered Community Health training by two year distance learning.
• Low Vision Assistant 1 week exposure to Kikuyu Low Vision Unit.
• Patient Attendant 2 week Instrument repair workshop in Kikuyu Eye Unit.
• Medical Director participated in the evaluation of the Kenya Integrated Education Programme.
• Project Manager 2 weeks Management and Sustainability of Projects at AMREF Nairobi.
  

Team building activities

The staff painted the perimeter wall - see picture on the right.

CBW and employee of the month awards were established to motivate the staff.

6 - Fundraising

Safaricom Diani Rules 2005 - a record Ksh1 million was raised this year. It was great fun as shown in the picture to the right. The main sponsor was again Safaricom.

For more information see more detailed reports on our news pages or visit www.dianirules.com

7 - Charity Shop

KDEC Charity shop and awareness centre was opened at the Diani Beach Shopping Centre in February. Donated items, both new and second-hand, are sold.

Thanks to people's generosity and hard work, this new venture is turning over a profit each month and many more people know about KDEC. The picture on the right shows Jan King, a trustee managing the charity shop.

8 - Future Charity Events

Eye Go Fishing Competition 26th and 27th November on the North Coast.

9 - Visitors to the Project January to June 2005

In order of appearance

• Mrs. L. Kalnoky – Austrian Red Cross
• Mr. & Mrs. A. Vonlanthen
• Mr. J. Banks – Nation Newspapers
• Ms. R. Ciesla – Perkins School for the Blind
• Ms. N. Thuo, Mr. R. Graham & Ms. E.Mumasaba – Sight Savers International, Regional Office
• Ms.M. Mohamed & Mr. F. Musyimi – Barclays Bank of Kenya – Mombasa
• Mr. J. Crow – Trustee, EFEA (UK)
• Mr. Verkaat & team – Verkaat Foundation, Netherlands
• Dr. R. Humphry MD FRCS – Honorary Ophthalmic Consultant for EFEA(UK)
• Mr B. Parker
• Nairobi Comprehensive Eye Services team
• Dr. & Mrs. Sabharwal – Arya Samaj community of Mombasa
• Mr. L. Baillie & Mr. A. Ng’ang’a – Safaricom Ltd
• Ms. R. Mutuku – Jocham Hospital
• Ms. Leah Kamau – Barclays Bank of Kenya – Diani Branch
• Teams from the Canadian High Commission and French & American Embassies for Diani Rules Sports Event
• Mrs. P. Watson, Mr. A. McCan, Ms. M. Menzies – Computers for Africa (Scotland)
• Ms. P. Omwodo – Trans World Radio, Nairobi

10 - Forthcoming Events

• Open Day on Wednesday 13th July 2005 - this will be a day to show KDEC supporters and the community what KDEC does. Emphasis is placed on what children with low vision can achieve despite their disability.
• Stakeholders forum to discuss the KDEC 5-year strategic plan.
• World Sight Day – Tuesday 11th October 2005.

11 - Infrastructure

• Humphrey Visual Field Analyser donated by Australian High Commission
• Focimeter & Trial frames
• Ophthalmoscopes and charger
• Tonopen donated for taking eye pressures in the field (all by anonymous donor)
• LCD Projector by Dark & Light

For this rural project, outreach activities determine the level of uptake of services. We need to urgently replace one 4WD vehicle to continue working

12 - Statistics January to June 2005