A united voice

The Global Summit for Eye Health has the potential to be a pivotal moment to galvanise action on eye health service delivery. But to realise this potential, we as an eye health sector need to have a united voice.

That is why the Policy Framework has been drawn up by people from across our sector. As K-T Overby said in Nepal, we need to “put on our sector hat” when speaking to governments and other stakeholders.

After years of multiple successes at global, national and regional level, we are still only keeping pace with the growth of vision impairment worldwide. A key objective of the Global Summit is to galvanise political leadership to agree new national policy goals and commitments.

Governments have, through WHO and UN resolutions, made commitments to improve access to eye care. Multilateral organisations have been called upon to support global efforts to eliminate avoidable blindness.

While we have had these multiple high-level commitments and guidance, we are yet to see consistently strong actions at the national level. The Global Summit serves as a pivotal moment for governments to reaffirm and make greater eye health commitments than ever before, to go beyond simply keeping pace and to end the current inequality in access to eye health globally.

Why a framework?

As part of the Summit planning and preparations a number of workstreams were set up including a Policy and Legacy committee which, as the name may suggest, is tasked with developing a policy framework and a means of monitoring both the commitments made and progress towards those commitments. The workstream is chaired by Dom Haslam from Sightsavers and members were invited based on their expertise and experience ensuring geographical representation, as well as from private sector, NGOs, eye health professionals etc.

The main target audience of the policy framework is heads of government with secondary targets being multilateral organisations, the private sector and philanthropists. As a committee we acknowledged the need to talk government sectors beyond the health ministries. Eye care is fundamental to education, to transport, to social protection and employment amongst others. The framework would need to reflect this cross-governmental and cross-sectoral importance.

Quite early in the process the committee decided to take a life-course approach to the framework. It is important that we outline to others what we in the sector know. We know that access to eye care impacts everyone, at every age.

We are not reimagining the wheel. As a sector we have been talking about how to address the unmet need, we need leadership and we need cross-governmental action. As a sector, we are well versed in how eye care impacts all facets of life. The policy framework is not reimagining that. The framework is packaging what we as a sector have been talking about, in a mechanism for governments and decision-makers to understand, and to enable us all  to speak consistently to our contacts and stakeholders.

If you look at the Policy Framework page, you will be presented with the policy narrative. This is designed to provide an overview to policy makers of the importance of eye care as part of inclusive economic growth and development. It presents a brief overview of the relevance of eye care across the life course and outlines areas that are needed to bring existing commitments to life.

There is also a policy table which is intended to be a reference document that stakeholders can refer to when drafting commitments to make at the summit. It is divided by sector and by life course segment, with policy commitments within relevant columns. The idea being, a Minister or policy maker in the education sector could flip to the relevant page and see commitments they could make at the summit.

These documents will form a key part of the toolkit for the sectors’ advocacy towards governments and other key stakeholders in the lead up to the summit. Commitments made will be tracked and can be used for national level advocacy and used to hold governments to account on their commitments, alongside the Case for Investment being developed

Next we are working on the legacy of the Summit – a means of tracking progress towards commitments that are made. Ideas are currently being formed by the Policy and Legacy committee – stay tuned!