One million eyesight consultations’ milestone reached in the Pacific

In 2021, Team Fred, alongside its partners, achieved over one million eyesight consultations throughout the Pacific since we began working in the region in 2002.

This number was reached despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which closed clinics, cancelled outreaches and deferred surgeries, and has far-reaching positive consequences for the overall eye health of our Pacific neighbours.

In addition to this milestone, key successes in 2021 also included:

• 65,679 patient consultations.
• 3,428 surgeries.
• 5,907 spectacles dispensed.
• 15 eye doctors and nurses graduated.
• 1,669 patients received treatment for diabetes eye disease.

This means that in total, since The Foundation began working in the Pacific in 2002, in collaboration with key local Pacific partners we have achieved:

• Over 81,000 surgeries.
• Trained 327 eye care specialists.
• Placed at least one eye doctor in all of the seven key Pacific countries where The Foundation works.
• Supported the establishment of seven eye clinics.

Reflecting on the remarkable achievements, our Chief Executive Dr Audrey Aumua says, “Through working alongside and supporting our local Pacific health partners, together we have been able to help over a million people throughout the Pacific, but there is still much to do to address the growing number of people desperately needing eye care.”

“We will continue to work alongside Pacific governments and health ministries to ensure that delivering eye care remains accessible to those who need it most, and support governments to continue to build eye health systems and strengthen policy efforts within the post COVID-19 rebuild. Our focus now is to support our Pacific partners to facilitate more access to eye care with increasing numbers of outreaches and deliver more surgeries that result in restoring sight. This, as well as continuing to train eye doctors and nurses, and supporting the Pacific workforce.”

“2022 marks our 30 Year Anniversary, so with Fred’s inspiring legacy at the forefront of our minds, we know that together we can clear the COVID-19 backlog of patients and get ever closer to our goal of ending avoidable blindness and vision impairment in the Pacific.”

View more results and reflections in our interactive online performance report "Our year at a glance".