The majority of Vietnam’s half a million blind people reside in rural areas, yet just 10 ophthalmologists are available per million Vietnamese — most practicing in the major urban centers. In the rural areas, health workers are usually nurses, who have minimal instruction in eye care issues and possess scant resources for blindness prevention and treatment.

But blindness in Vietnam can be alleviated. ORBIS’s work in Vietnam concentrates on:

• Increasing access to comprehensive eye care among rural communities
• Building the capacity of national institutions to take the lead in blindness prevention services and the provision of ophthalmic training
• Advancing pediatric ophthalmology

ORBIS opened a permanent office in Vietnam in 2003. In fiscal year 2006, ORBIS began work to establish Vietnam’s first eye bank, which will increase the number of corneas available for transplantation. ORBIS also funded the first wet lab in the country, where ophthalmologists can practice surgical procedures on animal eyes.

During CY 2006 (March-December 2006):

• 837,476 people were screened for refractive error or examined for eye disease
• 223,948 people received eye care treatment
• 14,687 surgeries were performed — figures that include 1,846 children
• 2,590 doctors, nurses and others were trained
• More than 4.8 million people were informed of ways to prevent blindness

ORBIS has achieved numerous “firsts” regarding blindness in Vietnam:

• ORBIS built the capacity of its local partners in Vietnam to prevent, detect and treat retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), an avoidable disorder caused when premature infants are incubated without proper monitoring of oxygen levels. This was the first project of its kind anywhere in the country.
  
  
• By setting up the first pediatric eye care networks of skilled health personnel across the three provinces of Vietnam, ORBIS has been actively strengthening Vietnam's capacity to address childhood blindness on a national scale.
  
  
• ORBIS designed a model rural eye care project in Phu Tho Province, Vietnam, through which eye care providers are trained to screen, diagnose and treat cataract and other blinding conditions. The first of its kind, no such training or services had previously been available outside of Vietnam’s major cities.
  
  
• ORBIS helped establish Vietnam’s first national eye bank.
  
  
• ORBIS funded the first wet lab in Vietnam, located in the Vietnamese National Institute of Ophthalmology in Hanoi, where ophthalmologists can practice and perfect new skills before operating on patients.
  
  
• ORBIS initiated the development of the first working group in Vietnam on Vision 2020 — a global effort to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020. The group consists of all NGOs working on eye health in Vietnam.
  
  
• ORBIS introduced Cyber-Sight, ORBIS’s telemedicine initiative, to provide worldwide, Internet-based ophthalmic patient consultation for free to any qualified partner in Vietnam.
  
  
• Vietnamese doctors received training on virtual reality surgery simulators for the first time during ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital programs.
  
  
• Through ORBIS, Vietnamese ophthalmologists can now receive continuing medical education credit through the American Academy of Ophthalmology for online work completed by Cyber-Sight partners and for virtual reality surgeries conducted on surgical simulators.

ORBIS partners in Vietnam include:

Ha Nam Center for Prevention and Control of Blindness • Phu Tho Center for Prevention and Control of Social Diseases • The Eye Station of Ha Tay Province • Vietnam National Institute of Ophthalmology

Fact File

Population	81,377,0001
Population under 15	31.1%2
Population living below national poverty line	50.9%3
Life expectancy	714
Literacy rate	90.3%5
Rural population	74.2%6
Percentage of total ophthalmologists working in rural areas	No figure available. However, most ophthalmologists work in large cities.7
Approximate number of practicing ophthalmologists	1,0308
GDP per capita	$4829
Health expenditure per capita	$2310
Health expenditure as % of total government expenditure	6.1%11
Prevalence of blindness	0.812
Blind population	651,01613
Prevalence of low vision	1.914
Population with low vision	1,546,16315
Prevalence of blindness under 15 years	0.08316
Leading causes of blindness	Cataract (65%), corneal opacities (7%), glaucoma (6%), childhood blindness (3.6%)17
Leading causes of childhood blindness	Corneal scar, cataract, glaucoma, optic atrophy18
Ophthalmologists per million population	No data19
Number of ophthalmologists	No data20

Footnotes

*Blindness is defined as visual acuity of less than 3/60 or a corresponding visual field loss to less than 10 degrees in the better eye with best possible correction.
** Low vision is defined as visual acuity of less than 6/18 but equal to or better than 3/60, or a corresponding visual field loss to less than 20 degrees in the better eye with best possible correction.