Formation 1985 Headquarters Sydney, Australia | Type NGO | |
Motto Vision for everyone ... everywhere Website www.brienholdenvision.org Formerly called Institute for Eye Research | ||
The Brien Holden Vision Institute (BHVI) is an Australian nonprofit non-governmental organization with an international focus on eye care research and vision care delivery. Formerly the Institute for Eye Research, in 2010 it was renamed in recognition of co-founder Brien Holden, a 1997 recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia for his contributions to eye care research.
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Mission
The Institute's mission is the worldwide eradication of preventable blindness and vision impairment, including people in undeserved communities. Its mission statement is: "We believe that sight is a fundamental right for everyone, everywhere. Our mission is to develop new solutions for vision care and eliminate vision impairment and avoidable blindness, thereby reducing poverty and suffering. We recognise the importance of building local and sustainable systems of eye care in collaboration with national health systems and meeting local community needs, allowing us to work alongside existing infrastructure to establish and/or improve delivery of eye care. We place a deep emphasis on community control in our partnerships at the local level to achieve affordable and quality eye care. To that end it undertakes research, offers postgraduate eye research opportunities to students, supports new technologies and helps deliver sustainable eye care throughout the world."
Research and development
The Institute develops and partners with commercial and nonprofit organizations worldwide to accomplish its goals. Its activities include the development of vision correction products (including eyeglasses, contact lenses and surgical devices) for the treatment of myopia (near-sightedness), presbyopia (also known as "aging sight"), hyperopia and astigmatism. It also conducts research in improvements in contact lens technology, treatments for conditions such as dry eye and technologies to detect eye disease and other eye related conditions.
Global activities
Brien Holden Vision Institute (BHVI) is represented in New South Wales and the Northern Territories of Australia, Cambodia, China, Colombia, India, Malawi, Mongolia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda and Vietnam. Worldwide, the Institute has developed over 400 eye care sites and, since 1998, provided optometric services to more than 2.5 million people. It has reached 57 schools and trained nearly 50,000 eye care personnel. It was one of two principal investigators in the 2012 study, "The global cost of correcting vision impairment from uncorrected refractive error", with findings published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.
Africa
In Africa, the Institute sponsors the African Vision Research Institute at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, which conducts research on disease control, human resource development, infrastructure development, provides training in research methods, and promotes publication of research findings for postgraduate students. Additional collaborative work includes vision care in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, projected to reach four million children. In 2014, BHVI partnered with Standard Chartered and SightSavers to provide paediatric eye surgeries at no cost to children aged 15 and younger in Uganda, as part of the Seeing is Believing Child Eye Health project. Also in 2014, BHVI stressed the need for access to affordable spectacles in Tanzania in order to help eliminate vision impairments. The organization partnered with the Tanzanian Optometric Association to distribute spectacles and offer free "professional development courses" for optometrists.
China
Researchers at the Zhongsan Ophthalmic Centre at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China are working in 2013 with the Institute on juvenile myopia on a project focused on myopia clinical translational research. Myopia, which affects up to 600 million Chinese people, is a target of research at the Australia China Centre for Optometry Research and Development, which the Institute established in 2012.
India
In 2011, the Institute co-founded the India Vision Institute, headquartered in Hyderabad, India.
Pakistan
In 2014, a six-day workshop called Low Vision Assessment and Peadtric Refraction provided training and inventory to refractionists from Pakistani district headquarters hospitals, the College of Ophthalmology (COAVS) and Layton Rahmatulla Benevolent Trust hospitals . It was led by the South Asia regional manager of BHVI and the program manager of BHVI Pakistan. This marked the first time in Pakistan that ten district headquarters hospitals were equipped to operate low-vision centers.
Australian government support
The Institute is an essential participant in Vision CRC Ltd, which was established in 2003 under the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centres Program.
The Australian government's National Health and Medical Research Council lists BHVI as an Approved Administering Institution. The Australian International Development's NGO Cooperation Program helped to fund the Institute in a partnership with Lurio University in Mozambique, to develop and implement a comprehensive program for optometry services in Mozambique and for Portuguese-speaking African countries. The Institute has full membership in the anti-poverty organization Australian Council for International Development and is a full participant in "Vision 2020 Australia", which is part of a global initiative of the World Health Organization and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness.
Brien Holden Vision companies
The Institute has sponsored the establishment of commercial entities known as Brien Holden Vision subsidiary companies in Australia, China, India and the United States to directly bring to market advanced products of benefit to consumers and to generate revenues to fund research, education, development and humanitarian activities.
The Institute is developing instruments for diagnosis of eye disorders and in 2012 took a controlling share in the United States company, Quantum Catch, renamed Brien Holden Vision Diagnostics, a company focused on the design, manufacture and sale of affordable, high-quality diagnostic medical devices.