Sightsavers – alias the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind, and incorporated under Royal Charter in 1868 – exists to treat and to a substantial extent eliminate blindness. The hardships suffered by the blind need no description. The Government’s Department for International Development recently reviewed 42 aid agencies believed by the Department to be “leaders in their field….who can….achieve real results in terms of poverty reduction and provide good value for money”. Only nine achieved a high performance rating; Sightsavers was one of them. It spends 94.5p of every pound raised on its work; 5p on getting in more funds; and only 0.5p on administration. In particular, it spends money on three fields: cataract operations; and the elimination of two diseases of hot weather countries, river blindness and trachoma.
The usefulness of money spent on cataract operations is shown by the World Health organisation in their Bulletin of 6th September 2011, which says “Clearly cataract surgery is practiced under very different circumstances in different parts of the world, and although its cost varies enormously it is one of the most cost-effective of all health interventions”.
(The quote is on http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/10/10-080366/en/ should anyone be interested). The operation requires no follow-up and, once performed, confers a lifelong benefit free of further cost to the charity.
As for river blindness: this is the second most common cause of blindness due to infection, after trachoma. Some 17,000,000 to 25,000,000 are affected by the disease, although it may take years to proceed to full blindness. A drug called Invermectin kills the larvae though not the adult worm that carries the disease in the human body. Invermectin is provided free by the manufacturer, Merck & Co. It needs no refrigeration and has a wide safety margin, so it can be given at very low cost by minimally trained community health workers. As humans are the only host, all that is needed is to administer Invermectin to a neighbourhood for long enough – six monthly or annual doses for 15 − 17 years is the practice – and the worms will die out and the neighbourhood be permanently free of the disease. It was eliminated in Colombia in 2013 and in Ecuador last year.
Trachoma is the commonest cause of blindness through infection. Eliminating it is a more complicated process than eliminating river blindness, but equally possible. So far six countries – Ghana, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Iran, Morocco and Oman – have each reported the disease eliminated within its borders.
Money donated to Sightsavers is helping to free from these two diseases not just people alive now, but their descendants for ever, and I can therefore think of no better charity.