Seva at work in Malawi

Malawi in Africa is one of the poorest countries of the world and has a population of approximately 13 million people.

Seva is a charity organization working for children and adults in Africa.

Congenital and developmental cataract is the leading cause of blindness in children in Malawi.

Every year approximately 120-180 children are born with congenital cataract or they get developmental cataract. Moreover, there is a backlog of approximately 600 children with congenital cataract.

In 2008, the first year that pediatric ophthalmology services were available at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, a total of only 81 Malawian children received surgery.Clearly, there is a significant unmet need.

Without urgent help, these children will face a lifetime of blindness and all the suffering which that entails.

Seva Canada provides high-quality comprehensive eye care services for the children in Malawi.

Read our report on the first 18 months of our program to fight childhood blindness in Malawi

Specific objectives over three years include:

• Increase by 50% the referrals of children to the tertiary hospital who are blind or severely visually impaired.
• Increase by 50% the number of surgeries for congenital and developmental cataracts each year for the next three years.
• Ensure that 100% of children who need post-operative refraction receive spectacles.
• Ensure that over 80% of children receive an IOL (intraocular lens).
• Ensure that all potential partners (service groups, non-eye care NGOs, eye care groups, and government) are educated regarding the importance of early detection and early referral of children with severe vision loss.
• Ensure 100% follow up of children enrolled in the management system.
• Ensure that 100% of children are encouraged to be placed in an appropriate educational environment.
• Ensure 100% two-year post-treatment follow up of all children identified.

Read how you can provide eye care to a child or children in Malawi.

Visit the Seva Canada blog to see photos and read more about our work in Malawi

Providing children's glasses & low-vision devices

It is essential that post-operative spectacles be provided for over 90% of children receiving surgery for congenital or developmental cataract. Spectacles need to be made individually; “ready-made” spectacles are not appropriate. As children’s faces are smaller than adult faces, using adult frames is inappropriate: the papillary distance cannot be matched with outsized frames and nose pieces are often too large to sit on a child’s nose. Paediatric frames are generally more expensive than adult frames and virtually impossible to source in Africa. Finally, the program needs to provide frames that children want to wear. 

In 2008 in Blantyre, none of the 81 children who had surgery received post-operative spectacles because of the lack of frames.To avoid this problem in the future, frames will be provided by KCCO through donations from Seva Canada. These frames will be taken from stocks maintained at KCCO. The lenses will be obtained locally and the fitting can be done at the existing optical workshop in Blantyre. The team in Blantyre will also explore how they can order the lenses directly from China or India to get the best possible price. We anticipate distributing about 120 pairs of glasses in the first year and 150 in the second year. This means that we will need a minimum number of 200 frames at the start of the project period.

Seva Canada is extremely grateful to OGI Canada Inc. and Perfect Optical (Canada) Ltd. for their generous donations of children's eyeglass frames for this project.