Our work in Mongolia

In Mongolia, access to high quality, affordable eye care services are limited in both urban and rural areas. Lack of equipment, training and infrastructure have been major barriers to adequate care as well as a need for a more comprehensive framework to treat children’s eye disease. Thanks to your support we are making big strides to change this.

Success in Mongolia

The Flying Eye Hospital first landed in Mongolia in 1989. In 2014, Orbis launched a four-year project with the National Centre for Maternal and Child Health (NCMCH), the main provider of children’s eye care in the country, and five county-level hospitals in rural Mongolia. The aim was to establish a model for comprehensive vision care that provides services from basic vision screening to the management of more complex paediatric eye disorders.

Since we started working in Mongolia hundreds of eye health professionals across the country have been trained to screen for, diagnose and treat eye conditions in babies and children. Conditions such as retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), an eye disease that can happen in premature babies. If not diagnosed early enough ROP can lead to blindness. Training has included the use of important diagnostic tests such as the red reflex test, a non-invasive test which can show early warning signs of serious eye conditions in children.

Sudheer Sukumar providing treatment to a patient, colleagues in scrubs behind him — We've been working in Mongolia since 1989

Your support has helped us screen more than 9,700 children in schools, communities and hospitals to date in 2022, including more than 1,000 babies who have been screened for ROP at the NCMCH.

In 2022 so far, we have delivered:

9,773

Community eye screenings & examinations of children

1,371

Premature babies screened for Retinopathy of Prematurity

220

Eye health professionals and health care providers trained

As a result of our ongoing advocacy work, we’ve helped make paediatric eye health a priority for Mongolia’s policymakers and the Ministry of Health.

But there is still more to do.

Right now, nearly two-thirds of children with cataracts and seven in every eight children with retinoblastoma (a cancer of the retina) have conditions too far advanced for doctors to save their sight by the time they reach the NCMCH.

What We're Doing Next

We are continuing to train and increase the capacity of neonatologists, paediatricians, and primary health care providers in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar. We are also working in four aimags (provinces) to examine newborns’ eyes in maternity hospitals, and children’s eyes in health centres and communities.

Building on our work to improve screening and diagnosis of ROP we will be extending these services to four more aimags across Mongolia. Increasing the capacity of ophthalmologists and neonatologists in prevention and management of ROP in these areas.

Orbis will also continue to advocate for better eye care services and eye health awareness and work with policymakers to address still unmet needs, like access to refraction screening and to corrective lenses, particularly for children in Mongolia.

Partner

National Center for Maternal and Child Health (NCMCH)