Integrated people-centred eye care: Regional Update

Most of you will have heard the term “IPEC” by now. It’s the cornerstone of the World Report on Vision and together with WHO, IAPB aims to roll out IPEC everywhere by 2030. An enormous task! As we embark on this journey together, we’ll be providing quarterly updates in the newsletter on IPEC activities from around the region. I can tell you that exemplar activities (activities which will be used as examples for the global rollout) are already rolling out in Western Pacific – more about them in the Q3 update. Meantime: what is IPEC? If you take nothing else from this newsletter here’s a quick ready-reckoner:

As summarised in the World Report on Vision, integrated people-centred eye care:

• is defined as services that are managed and delivered so that people receive a continuum of health interventions covering promotion, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation
• should address the full spectrum of eye conditions according to their needs, coordinated across the different levels and sites of care within and beyond the health sector.
• recognizes people as participants and beneficiaries of these services, throughout their life course.

The implementation of integrated people-centred eye care requires four strategies:

• Empowering and engaging people and communities.
• Reorienting the model of care;
• Coordinating services within and across sectors; and
• Creating an enabling environment.

As I say, stay tuned for more highlighted examples of activities in the region. These will guide us as we start to build national policy dialogues framed around IPEC into 2022.

Image on top: The refractionist is helping group of elders for visual check in Social protection center in Hanoi where the homeless elders are living/ Nguyễn Hữu Thông