Building Sustainable Eye Health Systems

Being the text of the keynote lecture delivered at the theme symposium of the 46th Annual Scientific Conference of the Ophthalmological Society of Nigeria on 1st September, 2022

Abstract

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines a sustainable healthcare system as a system that improves, maintains, or restores health while minimizing negative impacts on the environment and leveraging opportunities to restore and improve it, to the benefit of the health and well- being of current and future generations.1 There are three pillars of a sustainable healthcare system. These are social equity, economic viability, and environmental protection. As in the Venn diagram in Figure 1, these three entities overlap to make a viable and sustainable healthcare system. This can be extended to eyecare systems that involve the eyes.