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Since the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January 2010, Sightsavers has supported our partner Société Haïtienne D’Aide aux Aveugles (SHAA - Haitian Society for the Blind) to provide emergency food relief that benefitted 3,750 persons, and cash grants to support 125 families with basic necessities and restoration of their livelihoods. Cash grants were made to visually impaired people who previously received loans from SHAA for income generation activities, but lost their small businesses in the natural disaster that claimed over 200,000 lives.

Sightsavers has also supported SHAA’s relocation to an office at 6 Bis Tertulien Guilbeaud Street, Bourdon Road, Port-au-Prince, and provided some office running costs and essential equipment including a generator, inverter, computer, printer and office furniture. SHAA’s original office in Port-au-Prince was severely damaged, one part collapsed and the rest will be demolished as it constitutes a danger.

In April 2010 Sightsavers, CBM, ORBIS and PAHO/WHO supported a team of experts who visited Haiti to work with members of the Haiti CNPC (National Prevention of Blindness Committee) to complete an assessment of the situation of eye health facilities in the earthquake affected areas of Port Au Prince, Carrefour, Leogane, Petit Goave and Jacmel. The assessment team made recommendations which were taken forward at a meeting of Haitian, regional and international organisations in May in the Dominican Republic.

Over the coming years we will work with these organisations and our partners SHAA, CNPC, PAHO and the Caribbean Council for the Blind to develop services in Haiti including setting up three operating theatres in public health facilities, a spectacle lab and four vision centres. We will support training for three ophthalmologists, four optometrists, four refractionists, four dispensing technicians, two spectacle lab technicians, three low vision specialists, ten low vision counsellors, 360 primary health care workers, and two biomed technicians. We will provide support to strengthen Haiti’s refractionist training programme, and continue to support the training for education and rehabilitation workers.