Haiti opens optometry school

After almost five years of planning, the first ever School of Optometry in Haiti has opened welcoming 17 new students onto its first ever Bachelor of Vision Sciences programme. Entry to the course was competitive, with 144 applicants taking the entrance exam on World Sight Day.

There has been a very positive response to the establishment of the School, which is part of the Faculty of Medicine at l’Universite d’Etat d’Haiti (UEH), in Port au Prince. Locally-trained optometrists will be a huge benefit for the 70% of the population who currently have little or no access to eye care services, said Dr Luigi Bilotto, director Global Human Resource Development at the Brien Holden Vision Institute, which helped make the project a reality. "We expect the annual intake to grow over coming years (so that) within 10 years, there will be at least 80 new locally-educated eye care professionals who will be providing eye care to more than 360,000 Haitians per annum.”