Sunil shah

1. Giving Cambodians
Sight Again

3. WHO defines blindness as
best corrected vision of less
than 20/500
-need to be able to correct
refractive error
-need to be able to treat
pathology

4. Eye Care in
Cambodia
Current Situation
• Over 180,000 Cambodian are blind.
• 10,000 Cambodians suffer avoidable
blindness each year.
• 90% of blindness is avoidable.
• 79% is curable and 11% is preventable.
• Three-quarters of blindness is due to
cataracts, and the rest is due to uncorrected
vision, glaucoma, corneal scarring and
pterygium.
• Only 38 ophthalmologists service a
population of over 15,000,000 – one of the
lowest number of ophthalmologists per
capita in the world.

5. Blindness
Targets the Poor
& Women
Breaking the Link
• In Cambodia, 10% of population
lives below the poverty line - over
40 % earns only $2 per day.
• Most of the poor live in rural
areas where there is either no or
limited access to eye care.
• Blindness is sexist – women are
more than twice as likely as men to
suffer from cataract blindness.
• Cataract backlog is over 300,000.

6. Developing
Sustainable
Eye-care
Making Our Vision Reality
• Our aim is to build local capacity through
training local doctors and health workers,
building new facilities, and introducing the
latest technology and equipment.
• We are helping create a self-sustaining
local centre of excellence for eye care
training and service delivery in Cambodia’s
capital Phnom Penh.
• This will enable us to create a one-stop
centre for eye screening and operations.
• We help train ophthalmologists so there
will be a generation of local specialists
ready to take on the challenge of
eradicating avoidable blindness.

7. Seeing the Future
Paving the Way for the Next
Generation
• Education
• Education
• Education

8. Vision
 Significantly reduce avoidable blindness
 Start optometry school
 Start ophthalmic residency program

9. Locations at present
 University of Puthisastra: a healthcare university (small
ambulatory care centre)
 Second larger city centre operating centre
 Out of city hospital – long term vision for enabling high
volume surgery and larger training centre
 General practice group working in the Floating Villages
on the Tonle Sap (large inland lake)

10. Progress
 Significantly reduce avoidable blindness
 Appointed 2 full time Indian surgeons proficient in high
volume surgery
 Full time nursing and administrative team (ultimately will
have 10 nurses)
 Primarily cataracts and pterygiums but seeing all
ophthalmic problems
 Also seeing many cases that no one else can / willing to
deal with

11. One day in Phnom Penh

12. Progress
 Start optometry school
 No optometrists in Cambodia
 Have appointed 3 full time optometrists
 Working with Essilor Foundation to create ‘refractionists’
to provide cheap glasses to villages
 Optometry degree program agreed with University of
Puthisastra to start in 2020

14. Progress
 Start ophthalmic residency program
 Cambodia trains 5 residents a year maximum
 This year has chosen to train none as there are ‘enough
ophthalmologists’ (38 local ophthalmologists of whom 25
operate for 16 million population )
 Local politics prevent a reasonable number being trained

15. Why is Khmer Sight different?
 We believe it is the team:
 The founder (and very active participant) is the Cambodian
Secretary of State who to date has funded everything
himself
 The Medical Director is Prof Sunil Shah, an internationally
respected ophthalmologist
 The Board of the charity includes Prince Tesso and Princess
Sita and we have just been adopted as a Royal charity by
the King

16. We believe that we can impact
blindness in Cambodia very
quickly with international
support

18. Needs
 All charities have funding requirements
 Particularly useful is sponsorship of full time international
surgeons and optometrists
 Main need and request to ESCRS is to help with
residency program
 Rotation of trainers going to Cambodia
 Opportunities for Cambodian ophthalmologists / residents
to upskill in Europe