Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is defined as “ensuring that all people have access to needed promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative eye health services, of sufficient quality to be effective, while also ensuring that people do not suffer financial hardship when paying for these services.”
Universal Eye Health focuses on Universal Health Coverage being achieved in eye health through focusing on comprehensive eye care services that are integrated in the national health system. The vision of this initiative is a world in which no one is needlessly visually impaired, where those with unavoidable vision loss can achieve their full potential and there is universal access to comprehensive eye care services.
Given that diabetes is a global epidemic, and the growing burden of diabetic eye disease, we expect an increasing burden on the diabetes and eye care health systems in the next two decades.
Eye care services are often underutilised by people who need them, such as those with refractive errors or cataract or glaucoma. This leads to a large burden of avoidable visual impairment and blindness.
Comprehensive eye examinations for people with diabetes provide an opportunity for raising awareness, and for these conditions to be diagnosed and treated. Eye examinations can therefore be a driver for increasing uptake of eye care services in the general population.
In order to achieve Universal Eye Health, the following are needed with respect to diabetes eye health:
- Comprehensive eye care services: the services should be available for the full range of causes of vision impairment in diabetic eye disease as well as comorbidities, and should include health promotion, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation
- Eye health is integrated into health systems, and this should be considered in the six building blocks of a health system according to WHO: governance, health financing, service delivery, human resources, medicines and technologies, and information
- Access for everyone, including people with diabetes who are undiagnosed, marginalised, poor, minorities, disabled or immobile, visually impaired, rural, urban poor or part of underserved groups. This requires programs to reach these groups, as they may not present themselves to the diabetes or eye clinic because of various barriers.
- Diabetes and its consequences, including visual impairment, are costly to patients and economies. Point of care payment however should not prevent access to diabetes or eye care services: it should be free for the poorest.
Your take
Do you think Universal Health Coverage/Universal Eye Health is achievable?
Additional resources
Universal Eye Health: a global action plan
Universal eye health: increasing access for the poorest
© Nyawira Mwangi
Control of Diabetic Retinopathy 