The Integrated Comprehensive Eye Service project for visually impaired children: Pilot program

This is a pilot project that emerged from the parents of visually impaired children based on their long experience with the existing services in Egypt. The concept of the pilot project has been developed by two parents of a visually impaired child and who are professionally involved nationally and internationally in the area of visual impairment. One of the authors of this article is an Orientation and Mobility specialist. This project has been implemented in a poor urban quarter (Misr El Qadima) in Cairo. The visually impaired children in this community do not receive any services starting from medical assessment to rehabilitation. To mainstream them in all aspects of life we had to empower them and provide them with the needed services that made integration possible. A major issue among this group is that a large number of the low vision children are categorized as blind and treated as blind because of lack of awareness among parents and society as well as lack of early intervention training and professional assessment. Identifying these children and assessing their individual needs by professionals is the first step in providing them with the needed services. To enable the low vision children and blind to function and participate in the society they have to be provided with certain facilities and tools, i.e. books, visual aid, special size writings, lightening, etc. On the other hand the parents and the community have to be aware and understand how to interact positively with this disability, in particular also how to stimulate them to have a normal development and be easily integrated in society. Therefore all the proposed activities in this project will pave the way to the full integration of the visually impaired. The activities of this project were implemented in partnership with all service providers at the community level as well as the national level.