Trends and implications for achieving VISION 2020 human resources for eye health targets in 16 countries of sub-Saharan Africa by the year 2020

Table 1 VISION 2020 human resources for eye health and cataract surgery targets for sub-Saharan Africa

	VISION 2020 target per million population
Ophthalmologists	4
Cataract surgeons	10
Ophthalmic clinical officers
Ophthalmic nurses
Optometrists	20
Mid-level refractionists	20
Cataract surgery rate	2,000
Cataract surgeries per surgeon (surgical efficiency ratio)	500

In VISION 2020 documents, cataract surgeons, OCOs and ophthalmic nurses are combined as ‘mid-level personnel’ and share a single target [1]. In our analyses, we collected and reported separate data on all three cadres and combined cataract surgeons with ophthalmologists in a new ‘all surgeons’ category to highlight human resource needs associated with cataract surgical performance. Similarly, optometrists and mid-level refractionists were reported separately and combined in some analyses in an ‘all refractionists’ category.

ISSN: 1478-4491