The BMJ Christmas appeal 2016-7: Orbis, the sight savers
BMJ 2016; 355 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i6425 (Published 01 December 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;355:i6425
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Many thanks for your responses about The BMJ's choice of charity for our Christmas appeal this year. We choose a charity to support each year from those that have contacted us asking for this support. Previously, we've supported Save the Children, Lifebox, MSF, and MDM.
We make the decision based on several factors including how well we think the charity will resonate with our global readership of practising clinicians; how much difference we think BMJ readers' donations can make; and the level of administrative and editorial support that the charity can offer us in running and promoting the appeal. We check that the chosen charity meets all regulatory requirements.
We would be pleased to consider smaller charities such as Second Sight for a future appeal.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Second Sight is a brilliant organization; lean, efficient, and serving the oft neglected North which has a great need for free cataract surgery. On several occasions I assisted with the organization of necessary infrastructure for eye surgery. I saw them in action and they are a role model for any medical NGO.
Competing interests: No competing interests
With all due respect for the admirable work of Orbis, I fully endorse the comments made by other correspondents and would be grateful if the BMJ in future will recognise the work of Second Sight
Additional support for Second Sight promoted by the BMJ would have been particularly appropriate at the moment because of devaluation of the Pound. This has made maintaining the funding of programmes run by Second Sight's partner hospitals in India much more costly.
From personal experience of 7 visits as a volunteer helping Second Sight programmes, please may I express my admiration for Lucy Mathen’s inspiration of her volunteer helpers in the UK and colleagues in India. Her and her team’s close supervision of funding and standards in this work ensures high quality care at minimal cost providing free treatment for cataract blind patients.
Competing interests: No competing interests
I am delighted that the BMJ is helping to raise the profile of avoidable global sight loss; I am disappointed that in doing so you did not take the opportunity to add your support to the work of Second Sight, an admirably lean and effective organisation whose extraordinary founder Lucy Mathen you recognised in 2012 with the Karen Woo award. Lucy was hugely deserving of the in 2012 and since then, as before the award, she has continued to work tirelessly and without fuss running Second Sight.
I work as an NHS consultant ophthalmologist and have been twice to India to help out with training Second Sight surgeons (I also briefly taught Lucy herself during her ophthalmology training). I feel that I have learnt far more from Lucy and her team than I have taught them; my experiences in India have been by far, and without question, the most rewarding of my 30-year eye health career. I continue to marvel at the cost-effectiveness of Lucy’s organisation and her seemingly boundless energy and commitment helping to cure preventable blindness in India.
I am of course also aware of the wonderful work done by Orbis but there can be no comparison between these 2 organisations in terms of value for money or the need for financial assistance - Second Sight must surely win both of these contests hands down. I wonder if there is any way that the BMJ can help support Second Sight in addition to Orbis?
Competing interests: No competing interests
To support ending avoidable blindness, why did the BMJ choose a huge, wealthy, US based charity over the small but massively effective UK charity recognised by your Karen Woo award in 2012?
In the article you state last year Orbis’s supporters helped fund 65,558 operations globally. Tiny Second Sight has directly funded almost 50,000 annually in some years, on average around 35000 in the worst place for cataract blindness in the world, Bihar in India, which is why we chose to work there 15 years ago.
Every penny of every donation goes straight to the task of making a blind person see. We are small, the office is a corner of a bedroom and we pay our costs from our own pockets; but we are hugely effective, over a quarter of a million people can now see thanks to our work and Indian eye surgeons and paramedics trained by us remain where they are most needed - serving the rural population.
BUT we need to finish the job; to eliminate blindness in this one region Bihar, in the next 4 years. While all the big charities have made a generic and vague commitment to end avoidable blindness Second Sight has committed to do this in one place and by a definite deadline so needs financial help for a finite time.
It is a shame, having recognised the work of Second Sight the BMJ missed the opportunity to support it this time.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Whilst I believe passionately that the world's poor should not have to suffer blindness as a result of a treatable condition such as cataracts, I am disappointed that the BMJ has chosen a large, well funded charity such as Orbis to promote as its chosen charity this year. I have worked briefly for a tiny UK charity called Second Sight, which has dedicated itself to curing cataract blindness in the one of the poorest parts of Northern India for over 10 years and feel that an opportunity to support a small well run, ethical UK charity which has made a huge difference has been lost.
As a direct result of Second Sight's work, more than 250, 000 people have had their vision restored and individual hospitals in Northern India have developed the capability to carry out up to 50,000 cataract operations per year at single centres. By using the existing infrastructure in poor rural areas including locally trained, highly expert doctors, Second Sight is building a sustainable legacy of expertise for the future. All of this has been achieved through the dedication of its founder, Lucy Mathen and its Board of Trustees and ophthalmic surgeons who are volunteers who fund their own travel costs and work out of a tiny bedroom office so that all donations can go directly to restoring blindness.
I am keen to understand what selection criteria was used to identify Orbis as the recipient of the BMJ 's support. In coming to a decision, it would seem reasonable that the scale of a charity's achievements should not be looked at in absolute terms but in terms relative to its infrastructure and funding base. In this regard, the impact that Second Sight has achieved would seem to dwarf the results of Orbis.
It is ironic that Lucy Mathen was the recipient of the Karen Woo award from the BMJ in 2012 for her work for Second Sight. All the more disappointing that the BMJ has gone from applauding the dedication of a highly effective tiny UK charity to supporting a major US based charity which already receives massive funding by comparison and whose infrastructure costs, including large salaries, will inevitably mean funds will be diverted away from its front- line work
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: The BMJ Christmas appeal 2016-7: Orbis, the sight savers
I'd like to add my support to include Second Sight in your next BMJ supported appeal. It is run by a doctor on a voluntary basis so all donations go into saving people's sight, mainly in Bihar, one of the poorest areas in the world.
Lucy Mathen has been effective at challenging Indian doctors to join colleagues from other countires in helping save the sight of people who cannot afford to pay for a simple cataract operation.
Jenny Rathbone AM
Competing interests: No competing interests