A total of 986 health workers from various health centres across the country have received basic training in eye care treatment courtesy of a local NGO, Vision for a Nation.

Rose Gahire, the NGO’s country director, announced this at a function to launch the next phase of the training aimed at increasing access to affordable eye care services.

"Initially, we had embarked on training at least two nurses from 450 health centres across the country. But by the time we finished, more health centres had been opened. We, therefore, need to train more,” Gahire said.

According to statistics from the World Health Organisation, 95 per cent of people with eye problems in Sub-Saharan Africa have no access to affordable eye care services.

Abdullah Uwihoreye, Vision for Nation’s programme officer, said the organisation wanted to fill the gap of eye services, especially at the grassroots.

"By the time we started working in Rwanda, there were no primary eye care services at the health centre level, so we partnered with the Ministry of Health to implement our programme,” Uwihoreye said.

"Currently, each health centre has at least two primary eye care nurses who are able to treat allergies, bacterial infections and can give glasses to patients who need them,” he added.

The organisation is currently working on their next phase of the programme, which is to ensure that primary eye care training is incorporated in the curriculum of the school of nursing.

"Rwanda has a high turnover of nurses and we cannot keep training all the time. What we have done is to train teachers in these schools and  we are also negotiating to see that this basic training is incorporated in their curriculum,” Uwihoreye added.

Vision for Nation started operating in Rwanda in 2010 and has so far distributed 33,000 glasses and trained three teachers from each nursing school to help them successfully implement the programme.