Integrated primary eye care interventions in Ethiopia

Context: There are 2.2 billion visually impaired people globally.

About 90% of these live in low-and-middle- income countries, 80% have avoidable conditions, which are amenable to well-established cost- effective interventions. WHO is promoting Universal Eye Health through integration of Primary Eye Care (PEC) into Primary Health Care (PHC).

However, there is little evidence how and what interventions work to effectively and sustainably integrate PEC services into PHC in low-income settings.

Proposed Research: The following studies will be conducted in Ethiopia in four phases: Phase 1: Population-based cross-sectional studies to assess eye care need, inequalities, eye health-seeking behaviour and capabilities.

Phase 2: Health System Preparedness Evaluation Study to assess the health system's capacity and gaps to deliver integrated PEC interventions.

Phase 3: Intervention Development, informed by Phase 1 & 2, through Participatory Action Research (PAR) to develop contextually appropriate, feasible, community owned-and-led integrated & sustainable PEC services.

Phase 4: Iterated testing and piloting of the identified PEC interventions both individually and as integrated package at community, health facility, and healthcare organisation level to identify a working PEC intervention that will inform scaled-up delivery of equitably accessible, quality, and sustainable PEC services integrated with PHC.