Health Programme

Sight Restoration / Blindness Prevention
In the Eastern Cape alone, there are 27 000 unnecessary blind people, due to cataract, a condition of ageing. Most of these live in rural areas. This process can be reversed through quick diagnosis, transportation to an eye health centre (e.g. Umtata, East London or Queenstown), and a 20-minute operation where the cloudy cataract is removed, and a perspex intra-ocular lens is inserted in its place. Bandages are removed 24 hours later, and sight is restored. The knock-on effects in the community include the carer (usually a school student), being allowed to return to school or participate in an active and productive working life (and the local economy), as the patient can now do as before his or her sight began to disappear. The Donald Woods Foundation can play a key role in facilitating this.

HIV / Aids
Key focus area is education to prevent transmission of the virus, adopting a pre-emptive approach by encouraging people to get tested for HIV, support for anti-retroviral drug treatment programmes, home-based care, and support for orphans and vulnerable children. The key principles in such a programme include: involving local people from conception to design to implementation; adopting a comprehensive approach from prevention to care and treatment; working in partnership with nurses, doctors and medical staff from the beginning; challenging and breaking down stigmas by involving and supporting people with HIV; quality not quantity in training and information from the beginning; and assessment through monitoring, revision and evaluation. In order to achieve this, the Foundation aims to: find local people who are competent and who have the right attitude and train them to be trainers of others, and to ‘normalise HIV’ as an issue in the community.

Health and Safety in the Community
To provide access for materials and information relating to wider issues of personal health and safety issues and awareness within the community. Such issues would be at the behest of those living in the community, but could range from personal health, diet, childbirth, domestic violence, sexual health, behaviour and violence, awareness of rights under the law, access to health / health provision / health centres, etc.