Eyesight charity Orbis are working to prevent avoidable blindness among workers in the Bangladeshi tea-growing region of Sylhet
Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of untreated cataracts in the world; it’s the country’s leading cause of avoidable blindness. When tea pickers working in the tea gardens in Sylhet, a region in north eastern Bangladesh, were screened for eye conditions, more than three per cent were found to have cataracts – over three times the national average.
Sylhet is home to over 150 tea estates, employing around 300,000 people. Here, the tea garden workers – mostly women from minority groups – spend over eight hours a day picking leaves to be sorted, processed and exported all over the world. Despite the long hours, and labour-intensive work, pickers are paid very little. According to a recent study, 74 per cent of Sylhet tea garden workers still live below the poverty line, relying upon the tea garden management for housing, food, education and medical facilities, and land to cultivate their own crops. Sadly, healthcare facilities within the tea gardens, including eye care services, are often limited or not provided at all, meaning that those who need glasses, medicine or surgery for vision problems often have no choice but to go without, impacting their ability to earn.
Orbis, an international sight-saving charity, has been working in the Sylhet district since 2017. While conducting outreach work in the surrounding area, staff from the Orbis Bangladesh country office met many tea garden workers with eye conditions, the most common being refractive error which can make it very difficult to see for their work, but that can be fixed with a simple pair of glasses.
Realising that there was a huge unmet need for an accessible eye care service, Orbis, in collaboration with Sylhet’s Adhunik Eye Hospital, conducted a pilot screening of 5,507 people, mostly women and their children, from the Malnichhera and Lakkatura tea estates in Sylhet. Among those who were screened, 340 pairs of spectacles were provided, 226 people received medicine and 170 cataract surgeries performed. ‘Because of my eye problems, I couldn’t face the sun, I had severe headaches. I was unable to pluck tea leaves and consequently lost my job,’ says one female patient, who was screened and treated for cataracts by Orbis during the pilot process. ‘After surgery, I started to work again. I can gather tea leaves, I feel well, have no headaches and got my light and job back.’
With funding from Guernsey Overseas Aid Commission, Orbis has now begun a one-year project aiming to reduce visual impairment and avoidable blindness among workers at twelve tea estates in Sylhet district. As part of the project, eight volunteers have taken part in training, provided by Adhunik Eye Hospital, to support their community’s access to eye tests, going door-to-door to screen 30,000 tea workers and their families over the one-year period.
The project is also looking to train 300 community leaders and staff from the tea garden health centres on the importance of looking after their vision, as well as where to seek help if something doesn’t seem right. Health centres, schools and other communal spaces will be provided with the resources they need to help keep the community’s eyes healthy.
According to Orbis, there is still more to be done to protect workers’ eyesight all over the world. A recent report from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and IAPB, revealed that approximately 12 million working-aged people are living with a vision impairment of occupational origin, and an estimated 3.5 million occupational eye injuries occur each year. Workers with a vision impairment are 30.2 per cent less likely to be in employment, compared to those without, and likely to face extreme poverty.
