Coaching Girl Well being Employees to establish trachoma
Pakistan’s well being system has a singular asset – its legion of feminine well being care professionals, referred to as Girl Well being Employees.
Round 100,000 feminine well being employees are at the moment working in rural areas and deprived city areas throughout the nation. They’re usually the primary stage of well being care for his or her local people, the place they’re concerned in companies equivalent to immunisation, pre- and post-natal care, and household planning.
Additionally they performed a key position within the combat towards trachoma. Over the previous few years, Sightsavers has helped to coach greater than 1,700 Girl Well being Employees and their supervisors to establish folks with signs of the illness.
In Pakistan, social limitations imply that some girls can’t be visited by male well being care employees, making the position of the Girl Well being Employees much more important. They have been capable of achieve entry to households, look at girls and kids, and refer them for remedy when essential.
Alongside this, we labored with Pakistan’s well being division to coach eight surgeons to function on sufferers with trachomatous trichiasis. That is the superior type of trachoma, the place an individual’s eyelids have begun to show inwards in order that their eyelashes scrape painfully towards the floor of the attention.
The surgeons we educated have been capable of perform operations to right this painful situation for 127 sufferers, together with 88 girls.