The FCDO leads the UK's work to end extreme poverty, deliver the Global Goals, and tackle global challenges in line with the government's UK Aid Strategy.
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)
Vision for Zambia
In 2015, Orbis UK benefited for the first time from UK Aid Match funding, matching what we raised from a public appeal. By the time the ‘Vision for Zambia’ project ended in 2019, more than 99,000 children across 10 districts in Zambia’s Copperbelt Province had been screened for eye conditions for the first time, and more than 800 health professionals had been trained on eye health.
Significant awareness raising in communities means that many more people understand the importance of eye health and know how and where to access services, including those in remote areas. An effective referral network was established so that people with more complex eye conditions can now be easily referred to the district and provincial hospitals for quality treatment.
Comprehensive Rural Eye Care in Ethiopia
A UK Aid Direct grant funds a five-year project in rural southern Ethiopia, with a focus on trachoma elimination. By its midpoint in 2020, the project had administered nearly 2.4m doses of antibiotics to tackle infectious trachoma and provided over 3,000 surgeries to address the painful, late stage of blinding trachoma. We use innovative messages in schools and the broader community to highlight the role that good hygiene plays in fighting trachoma.
ORBIS'S FIGHT AGAINST TRACHOMA
This Global Handwashing Day, we want to highlight our efforts in Ethiopia towards eliminating trachoma, the world’s leading cause of infectious avoidable blindness.
Screening Schoolchildren for Refractive Error in Nepal
Our 2019 ‘See My Future’ appeal raised £1.39m including the UK Aid Match grant. It enabled expansion of our REACH (Refractive Error Among Children) programme into a second province in south eastern Nepal. Almost 140,000 schoolchildren are screened annually and provided with spectacles if necessary, enabling them to engage better at school and maximise their educational achievement. Orbis pioneered REACH in 2016 in India, thanks to the support of the Qatar Fund for Development. It has already been tremendously successful there, providing 4.25 million eye screenings, more than 129,000 optical treatments and 1,400 surgeries as well as training over 55,000 teachers and community workers.
Orbis in Nepal - an urgent need to screen children's sight
All the money matched went towards expanding our project in Nepal, which screens and treats children with sight loss, enabling them to attend school and face a brighter future.
