Children running after a screening programme in Kenya.
Credit: Rolex / Joan Bardeletti
In 2019, eye health programmes powered by Peek have evolved and expanded.
In Pakistan, the CBM-Peek community eye health programme reached its one-year anniversary in November 2019. In the Talagang region our partners CBM Pakistan and College of Ophthalmology & Allied Vision Sciences (COAVS) have become the first to implement Peek technology across all primary healthcare facilities in the region.
The results? 18 eye health centres all connected and seeing several hundred people per day, with local resources being used more efficiently and more equitably thanks to the data uncovered by the Peek system.
The positive outcomes from the Pakistan community programme led to the launch of a school eye health programme in the same region in September, with the model for both programmes planned to be replicated in a second region in Pakistan in 2020.
Peek’s partnership with CBM is also flourishing in Zimbabwe, with CBM-Peek school eye health programmes launched in two districts, and a community programme launched in a third. Two further launches of school and community programmes are planned in Zimbabwe in the coming year, led by CBM Zimbabwe and implementing partners Council for the Blind Zimbabwe.
Peek has also continued working towards the delivery of a nationwide comprehensive school eye health programme in Botswana, the first of its kind, expected to launch in 2020. The Peek team in Botswana have also been providing support across all Peek programmes and form the heart of our new quality assurance and training team. In total, we delivered over 4000 hours of Peek training to 236 people in 2019.
In Kenya the Peek team in partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Kitale Eye Unit concluded a major randomised controlled trial of the Peek community eye health system in Kitale, supported by the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust. The results from the trial demonstrate the amazing impact a community programme powered by Peek can achieve and are expected to be published in 2020. Plans are now under discussion to replicate the work across several new regions in Kenya.
Finally our work on eye health surveys in collaboration with the International Centre for Eye Health (ICEH) at LSHTM has made huge progress this year. ICEH and Peek are collaborating to develop the next generation of the Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness eye health survey (RAAB7). This year, the new software has been tested,refined and used to provide critical data for planning eye care programmes in Cambodia, Nepal, Pakistan, Palestine and Zimbabwe. The development phase is now nearing completion and we expect to be able to release it more widely in 2020.