SAME Workshop at Malawi

By Jayashree Kumar

North India Area Office

The visit to Malawi was planned to attend a regional workshop on SAME (Sightsavers Aligned Monitoring & Evaluation) from 25-27 Sept 10 at Crossroads Hotel, Lilongwe.

Key learnings

1. The integration of PEC into PHC through Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) is a strong foundation for a more sustainable delivery of eye health services. I was impressed by the HSAs – they are very well equipped with skills to identify & treat basic eye conditions & cases requiring more complex treatment referred to the district hospital. But this all depends upon how the health workers are provided with correct knowledge, skills & sensitivity to prioritize eye health.


2. The eye care activities when easily linked with other departments have potential of getting more resources & a wider coverage. For ex- There are no separate eye camps held at PHC rather it is clubbed with other camps organized at the fixed dates.


3. It was interesting to know - Sightsavers & MOH officials make a joint visit (once in every quarter ) to the project implementing districts which they call it –support visits . They review & discuss the progress & suggest areas which need improvement at the district & PHC level . Ownership of the programme is seen – leading to the sustainability of the programme.


4. Malawi is short of trained health workers, not least eye specialists. with only four ophthalmologists in Malawi, a priority has been to train other health workers in eye care. So creating a more efficient workforce & primary eye care workers who can bring eye care to communities are given focused attention here.

* HSA: Sightsavers has supported Ministry of Health in developing a PEC training manual for HSAs which was intended to provide knowledge & skills to facilitate identification, treatment & referral of patients with eye conditions.( I have a copy of the manual if you want to refer). The Opthalmic Clinical Officer (OCO) uses this manual while training the Health workers.

Thankful to all the team members of the Malawi Sighsavers country office for the hospitality & the valuable time given during my visit. The Country Director Mercy Masoo has promised me to visit India to get an exposure of India programmes.

So that’s the Advocacy I have done …………………