Village-Integrated Eye Worker Trial II - Pilot

Overview

The vast majority of blindness is avoidable. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80% of cases of visual impairment could be prevented or reversed with early diagnosis and treatment. The leading causes of visual impairment are cataract and refractive error, followed by glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and diabetic retinopathy (DR). Loss of vision from these conditions is not inevitable; however, identifying at-risk cases and linking cases with appropriate care remain significant challenges. Worldwide, eye health care systems must determine optimal strategies for reaching people outside of their immediate orbit in order to reduce visual impairment. Visual impairment can be reduced by case detection of prevalent disease like cataract and refractive error, or by screening for early disease like glaucoma, AMD, and DR and preventing progression. Systems around the world have developed numerous approaches to both case detection and screening but there is very little research to support the choice of allocating resources to case detection or screening and little data exists on the cost effectiveness of the various approaches to each. VIEW II Pilot is a cluster-randomized trial to determine the effectiveness of different approaches to community-based case detection and screening for ocular disease. Communities in Nepal will be randomized to one of four arms: 1) a comprehensive ocular screening program, 2) a cataract camp-based program, 3) a community health worker-based program, and 4) no program.

Specific Aim 1: to determine whether screening leads to increased visual acuity compared to the cataract camp approach. Specific Aim 2: to determine whether a community health volunteer program increases the rate of cataract surgery compared to a no program.