Maldives initiates National Eye Health Plan development process for 2030 targets

Maldives recently launched WHO SPECS 2030 as well as initiated the Strategic national Eye Health Plan Development process with an aim to achieve global 2030 targets at the country level. A three days workshop was held from July 14 to 16 by the Ministry of Health Maldives and the WHO country office Maldives. Dr Abdulla Najim Ibrahim, the Honourable Health Minister of Maldives launched the WHO SPECS initiative in Maldives in the presence of other state ministers, WHO representative of Maldives and representatives from WHO SEARO, WHO HQ,IAPB and several other dignitaries from Maldives on14th of July.

This three days workshop was conducted  to initiate  the process of developing a national eye health plan led by  Health Protection Agency, Ministry of Health Maldives  in collaboration WHO and IAPB. The plan aims to set and achieve global targets on eye health by achieving  over 80% effective coverage on both refractive error and cataract and providing 80% of diabetic people access for eye screenings by 2030.

The workshop also highlighted the issues on eye health services of Maldives:

• Inadequate access to Cataract surgical services and refractive error services to the Maidivians residing in remote and peripheral islands.
• Government eye care services have limited coverge in eye health.
• Need for evidence generation and periodical analysis and intrepretation of data to assess the eye health need and coverage of services.
• People are still traveling abroad for eye treatment and surgery.
• Effective HR retention and motivation policy in eye health.
• Existing private sector requires facilitation and to be regulated.
• Need of effective monitoring and quality assurance mechanism.
• Need of focal point of eye health at Health Protection Agency/MoH.
• Need to broadened Government Health Insurance.

The workshop made recommendations aimed on resolving these issues in the forthcoming national strategic eye health plan.