For so many people in high-income countries, vision care is such an intuitive part of our lives that it’s been taken for granted for far too long, Anurag Hans, head of mission at EssilorLuxottica, told Devex. But with the United Nations’ new resolution on vision, that’s finally set to change.
Adopted in July, the resolution commits the international community to ensuring eye care for the estimated 2.7 billion people living with preventable sight loss by 2030.
“It’s taken some time for the world to realize the services and products we take as a given are not really available for about one-third of the world's population,” Hans said. The resolution now makes all 193 signatory countries active participants in the efforts to bring vision care to everybody, he added.
“There is a lot of interest and movement in creating cross-sector or cross-cause collaboration.”
— Anurag Hans, head of mission, EssilorLuxottica“Just like with any other large public health cause, there will be a need to look at cost-effective and scalable models for driving awareness,” Hans said. “I see a lot of interesting models for partnerships and public-private partnerships coming to the fore because of this resolution.”
Speaking to Devex, Hans explained the practical implications of the new resolution on the eye care sector, what can be expected in terms of progress, and how to drive action forward.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How will the U.N. resolution help to advance efforts toward eliminating uncorrected poor vision in a generation?
EssilorLuxottica has maintained a long-standing public ambition of playing a leadership role in eliminating poor vision in a generation. What this resolution does is bring in greater focus the need to provide eye care to everybody from the policy side.
For us, it will open up a lot of interesting avenues for partnerships, not only with governments, but also with international NGOs and other corporations who are interested in partnering on models or initiatives.
Why has it taken until now for such a resolution to come into effect?
For years, many — especially those with easy access to eye care services and products — have taken for granted that vision care is something that should be available to all.
However, in the past few years there has been a lot of research demonstrating the impact poor vision has on the overall quality of life. Studies have shown how a simple vision correction initiative can lead to higher productivity, improved gender equity, and overall quality of life across age cohorts. All this has helped build the momentum that has led to this landmark resolution.
How is EssilorLuxottica working to act on this resolution?
We have, over the past decade or so, invested a lot of time and resources in creating models that provide access to affordable vision care. We’ve always believed there is a need for multiple models based on the local constraints or the local contexts in each country and each region. For us, it’s a good opportunity to showcase some of these models as potential solutions to governments who intend to follow up [on] the resolution with concrete actions on the ground to make vision care accessible to all their citizens.
In some countries we’ve already created models of how to partner with both national and state governments. In some cases, these are philanthropic, but our primary focus is to create sustainable access that can be led by community members. We’re now in a good position to showcase these models to an increasing number of governments, giving them a spread of solutions that they can implement in their own country as they work toward making this resolution a reality for themselves.
Where does EssilorLuxxotica’s road map to end uncorrected poor vision in a generation fit in?
Q&A: How can faith-based organizations provide a clearer future for the vision-impaired?
Vision loss disproportionately impacts disadvantaged communities in hard-to-reach areas. Enlisting local faith communities could help, according to Greg Wiens of Global Vision 2020.
Our road map, which was launched at the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly back in 2019, was designed for the sector in coordination with global health experts who have worked on similarly large, pressing issues, such as the malaria road map or overcoming the Ebola crisis in Africa. We developed this road map in coordination with them and with large international NGOs who have extensive experience in creating models for sustainable vision care.
We were the first to put forth a road map to prove to the world that it is possible to eliminate poor vision with clear actions and clear messages. This resolution is very much in line, and very much in sync, with our road map. We have clearly defined, focused areas like the creation of sustainable community-based access points, innovation, awareness creation, and also cost-effective philanthropy methods — all of which will be critical for making this resolution a reality across countries.
Since the road map’s launch, EssilorLuxottica has started to put the road map into action in several countries. What lessons has it learned so far?
From the very beginning we had this realization — and we were very public in our intentions — that we would not be able to do it alone. The need for partnerships would be critical if we were to make progress. But what we’ve seen over the last two or three years is, in addition to forming traditional partnerships with other NGOs operating in the vision care sector or setting up partnerships with the governments focused on only creating access to vision care, there is a lot of interest and movement in creating cross-sector or cross-cause collaboration.
For example, earlier this year we launched a partnership with the MetLife Foundation, which is one of the largest foundations focused on financial inclusion. MetLife Foundation and EssilorLuxottica came together to co-create and co-found a model where micro-entrepreneurs from rural communities are trained to provide vision care to their communities, and ultimately are also able to earn a decent livelihood and therefore become more financially independent.
With this resolution there will be a lot of traction around creating partnerships, which not only reach one development cause or Sustainable Development Goal but overlap across many goals. We believe that all initiatives around creating access to vision care have substantial impact on education, livelihoods, gender equity, and so on. We’ve done a lot of groundwork and a lot of experiments. Going forward, we’ll be able to leverage those by creating partnerships, not only within the vision care industry, but also with organizations that historically have not had anything to do with the vision care sector.
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