The Child Vision Campaign is a special program that I have developed. The initiative has established international partnerships with organizations that have extensive experience in the field of blindness prevention. Now, that experience and expertise, gained through working with hundreds of thousands of people, is being applied to building improved service delivery systems and programs for children.

Worldwide, an estimated 40 million people are blind. The number of people affected grows each year, particularly in developing countries which are least equipped to respond. In these countries, cataract accounts for at least half of the blindness, and preventable conditions cause much of the rest.

The Child Vision Campaign collaborates with its partners to prevent blindness and restore sight by supporting locally-run programs in under-served communities. Our eye care work emphasizes research, service and evaluation of community-based methods to provide cataract surgery and other eye care of high quality, high volume and low cost. Our program partnerships, built on mutual respect, share the goal of making quality eye care services affordable and accessible to everyone.

The Child Vision Campaign was started to leverage the combined experience of the right partnerships to dramatically reduce childhood blindness and promote healthy vision. Every year almost 500,000 children go blind. Many of these children die within the first two years of going blind. Today, there are more than 1.4 million blind children in the world. The causes of childhood blindness vary. For many of these children, simple eye glasses can change their lives. For some, their blindness can be prevented and treated with education, intervention and early detection. For others, their blindness must be addressed through hospital treatment. A large number of children suffer from blindness that cannot be treated and must be addressed through rehabilitation services and community education.

The Child Vision Campaign is moving forward with significant programs using the expertise and talents of our various international partners to achieve remarkable results. Education, detection and rehabilitation are all being employed to understand local needs, develop service networks, and solve eye problems. Through our relationship with global world leaders and institutional clinics around the world the systems and strategies developed by the Childhood Vision Campaign and its partners will be leveraged for use in dozens of additional poor countries.