Indian Journal of Ophthalmology (Jan 2012)
Applying principles of health system strengthening to eye care
- Karl Blanchet,
- Daksha Patel
Affiliations
- Karl Blanchet
- Daksha Patel
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.4103/0301-4738.100553
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 60,
no. 5
pp. 470 – 474
Abstract
Understanding Health systems have now become the priority focus of researchers and policy makers, who have progressively moved away from a project-centred perspectives. The new tendency is to facilitate a convergence between health system developers and disease-specific programme managers in terms of both thinking and action, and to reconcile both approaches: one focusing on integrated health systems and improving the health status of the population and the other aiming at improving access to health care. Eye care interventions particularly in developing countries have generally been vertically implemented (e.g. trachoma, cataract surgeries) often with parallel organizational structures or specialised disease specific services. With the emergence of health system strengthening in health strategies and in the service delivery of interventions there is a need to clarify and examine inputs in terms governance, financing and management. This present paper aims to clarify key concepts in health system strengthening and describe the various components of the framework as applied in eye care interventions.
Keywords
- Diabetes-related blindness
- diabetic retinopathy
- key informant
- rapid assessment of avoidable blindness
- retinopathy of prematurity
- tele-ophthalmology
- Blindness
- disability
- equity
- health economics
- health policy
- health and development
- social exclusion
- Community eye health
- prevention of blindness
- ophthalmogical residency
- VISION 2020
- Visual impairment
- blindness
- inequality
- social class
- income
- educational status
- gender and ethnic groups
- Advocacy
- effective service delivery
- enabling environment
- stakeholders
- resources
- Avoidable blindness and visual impairment
- impact
- scaling up
- VISION 2020
- Global blindness
- prevalence
- visual impairment
- visual acuity
- Comprehensive eye care
- eye care model
- pyramidal model
- Comprehensive eye care
- optometrist
- optometry regulation
- eye health
- India
- Economics
- blindness
- visual impairment
- market
- government
- cost
- Millennium development goals
- eye health
- Vision 2020 the Right to Sight
- Blindness
- eye care services
- planning rapid assessment methods
- visual impairment
- Avoidable blindness
- cataract surgical rate
- corneal blindness
- eye care services
- Compliance
- diabetic retinopathy
- services
- Human resource development
- service delivery
- social entrepreneurship
- uncorrected refractive error
- Blindness
- cataract extraction
- cataract
- coverage
- data aggregation
- population
- prevalence
- visual impairment
- Case detection
- comprehensive eye examination
- developing countries
- glaucoma
- integrated approach
- training requirements
- Child health policy
- childhood blindness
- social determinants of eye health
- Access
- Asia-pacific
- coverage
- funding
- low vision
- policy
- Funding
- vision research priorities
- peer review
- research
- Cataract surgery
- clinical outcome
- patient-reported outcome
- quality improvement
- quality
- Global eye health
- health interventions
- health systems
- systems thinking