Eye Health Aotearoa Take Their Campaign About The Importance Of Eye Health To Parliament’s Front Door

• Eye Health Aotearoa (EHA) hosted an event at
  Parliament to launch the “Eye Care in Aotearoa New Zealand
  2022 – Eye Care Situation Analysis Tool (ESCAT)” report.
  The report can be downloaded from
  the Eye Health Aotearoa website.
• EHA also hosted
  another event at the New Zealand Parliament, providing
  partial eye checks to MPs and their staff as part of the
  global Love Your Eyes campaign. The Love Your Eyes campaign
  encourages individuals to take care of their own eye health
  whilst bringing attention to over a billion people worldwide
  who have vision loss and do not have access to the eye care
  services they need.
• New Zealand is leading the way.
  Eye Health Aotearoa’s screening at the New Zealand
  Parliament is the first of a number of screenings taking
  place in parliaments around the world.

On 27
July, Eye Health Aotearoa (EHA) took their campaign for the
importance of eye health to Parliament House. They invited
MPs and Parliamentary staff to have an OCT scan of their
eyes, before launching the new “Eye Care in Aotearoa New
Zealand 2022 – Eye Care Situation Analysis Tool (ESCAT)”
report.

EHA’s partial eye check is the first of many
taking place in parliaments and assemblies bodies around the
world. New Zealand is leading the world with other
screenings being planned globally including at the United
Nations in New York, the UK Parliament in London, the Nepal
parliament in Kathmandu, and the Australian Parliament in
Canberra.

Peter Holland, CEO of IAPB said:
“Congratulations to colleagues in New Zealand for hosting
the first event in the run up to this year’s World Sight
Day. It’s so important that decision makers around the
world understand the importance of eye health, and what
better way than to give them a sight screening.”

The
EHA Trust is gifting the “Eye Care in Aotearoa New Zealand
2022 – Eye Care Situation Analysis Tool (ESCAT)” report
to the people of Aotearoa New Zealand. The report was
prepared by The School of Optometry and Vision Science at
the University of Auckland, who coordinated a Technical
Working Group to provide a high-level assessment of the eye
health and vision care system.

The ECSAT is a tool
developed by the World Health Organisation. It provides a
“snapshot” of the eye care sector at that time and is
designed to address the following key
questions:

• What is the current situation of the
  eye care sector regarding integrated people-centred eye care
  (IPEC) (strengths, weaknesses, and
  inequalities)?
• What priority areas need to be
  addressed in eye care strategic planning?
• What are
  possible activities to address gaps across the eye care
  sector?

“We hope that by bringing our campaign
to the People’s House, we can show MPs the importance of
looking after the nation’s vision and reiterate just how
desperate the situation is. Eye health and vision care needs
to be a public health priority,” says EHA spokesperson, Dr
Justin Mora.

Drew Keys, Regional Program Manager
(Western Pacific) International Agency for the Prevention of
Blindness (IAPB) spoke at the 27 July 2022 report launch
about how Aotearoa New Zealand’s ECSAT report fits into
global policy trends.

“IAPB congratulates the
authors and EHA on this important piece of work. The ECSAT
is a foundation of the 2030 In Sight global strategy to see
that nobody experiences avoidable sight loss by the end of
the decade. As one of the very first developed health
economies to conduct an ECSAT, this report well-positions
New Zealand to undertake the eye health
journey.”

The ECSAT report also provides baseline
information for tracking capacity and performance of the eye
care sector. The findings show that New Zealand is doing
well in some areas but there are a number of areas that need
strengthening.

“Thousands of Kiwis lose their sight
unnecessarily every year, but we really have no idea of the
scale of the problem because there is no data on the state
of the population’s eye health,” warns Mora.

For a
number of years, EHA and others from New Zealand’s eye
health sector industry leaders have been campaigning
for a National Eye Health Survey, so that the state of
the country’s eye health can be properly understood and
steps can be taken to prevent avoidable blindness and vision
loss. New Zealand is being left behind by the rest of the
world with regards to eye health, and more and more Kiwis
are losing their sight unnecessarily because of inequity of
access to essential eye health and vision care
services.

The Lancet Global Health Journal “Lessons
from 2020 for equity in global eye health“ report authors
found that, “Although Aotearoa set an outstanding example
of the management of COVID-19, the country still experiences
eye health inequities. Indigenous people, including Māori
and Pasifika, have higher rates of uncorrected refractive
error, keratoconus, untreated cataract, and diabetic
retinopathy.”[1]

EHA
believe the Government is yet to fully recognise the current
inequity for New Zealanders in accessing quality and timely
eye health and vision care services, to prevent avoidable
blindness. They hope that this event will be the start of a
policy conversation around next steps to develop integrated
people-centred eye care in New
Zealand.

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