Mapping human resources for eye health in 21 countries of sub-Saharan Africa: current progress towards VISION 2020

Table 2 Proportional distribution of eye health practitioners by sector

	Country mean% workforce by sector
Eye care cadre	n countries	Government	NGO/Mission	Private-for-profit
Ophthalmologists	20	63.9	17.4	18.7
Cataract surgeons	16	68.1	22.5	9.4
All surgeons	19	63.4	18.5	18.1
OCOs	7	83.8	13.0	3.3
Ophthalmic nurses	17	82.2	10.2	7.6
All OCOs/Nurses	18	81.7	11.1	7.3
Optometrists	14	33.5	9.2	57.2
Mid-level refractionists	13	39.6	22.8	37.6
All refractionists	15	41.4	16.7	44.9

Table legend: data on the sector in which practitioners worked was not available for all sectors in all countries. In analyses of individual cadres, countries with ≤ one practitioner in the country were considered not to employ this cadre and excluded from analyses. In analyses of combined cadres which sum practitioners of two types, however, countries with none of an individual cadre were counted as having ‘zero’, so the number (‘n’) of countries considered to have contributed data may be different. Figures in bold indicate ratios for combined categories of practitioners.

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