The Flying Eye Hospital first landed in Mongolia in 1989. In 2014, Orbis launched a four-year project with the National Center for Maternal and Child Health (NCMCH), the main provider of children’s eye care in the country, and five county-level hospitals in rural Mongolia. The project aims to establish a model for comprehensive vision care that provides services from basic vision screening t the management of more complex pediatric eye disorders.
MONGOLIA
In Mongolia, access to high quality, affordable eye care services is limited in both urban and rural areas. Lack of equipment, training and infrastructure are major barriers to adequate care and there is no comprehensive framework to treat children’s eye disease.
在蒙古的工作成果
We've been working in Mongolia since 1989
Your support has helped us to screen more than 97,000 children in schools, communities and hospitals to date, including more than 1,000 babies who have been screened for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) at the NCMCH.
In 2020 alone, we delivered:
13,000
Community eye screenings & examinations for children
3,000
Infants screened for Retinopathy of Prematurity
350
Trainings for eye health professionals
Cataracts are the most common cause of blindness followed by glaucoma. Mongolia is also facing an epidemic of diabetic retinopathy (DR), a potentially blinding condition associated with diabetes.
Key Achievements
- Hosted eight Flying Eye Hospital projects
- Hosted two virtual Flying Eye Hospital projects when in-person training wasn't possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic
- Established or improved 10 neonatal intensive care units
- Supported the establishment or improvement of:
- Eleven secondary hospitals
- Three tertiary hospitals
- One wet lab
- Supported the inclusion of retinopathy of prematurity screening for newborns in the National Neonatal Screening program.
- Contributed to the increase in the pediatric cataract surgery rate at the National Center for Maternal and Child Health from 20 cases per year to 100 cases per year.
- Retinal imaging is being used in 5 diabetic clinics for diabetic retinopathy screening for the first time in Mongolia in 2022
What We're Doing Next
We are continuing to work with the National Center for Maternal and Child Health and county-level hospitals to train critically needed eye health professionals – from nurses to conduct school-based vision screenings to ophthalmologists to perform , strabismus and other surgical procedures. We’re also continuing to provide essential eye care equipment and instruments to the NCMCH.
Orbis will also continue to advocate for better eye care services and eye health awareness and work with policymakers to address still unmet needs, like access to refraction screening and to corrective lenses, particularly for children in Mongolia.
Partners
- National Center for Maternal and Child Health (NCMCH)
- Mongolia Ministry of Health
