How we help
Provide Comprehensive Eye Care
We opened our Impfondo eye centre in 2012, our Ouesso Interim Eye Centre in 2019, as well as our Interim Surgical Centre in 2022, to provide accessible comprehensive eye care.
Our new eye hospital is under construction and is scheduled to open in 2023.
Empower the Local Community
We train the community to create sustainable, locally managed services so that they will continue to run long after our involvement. Our nurse training program has been running since 2019. The students have been involved in clinical work, eye screening and COVID-19 relief initiatives.
Advocate Eye Health
We partnered with the government, WHO and schools to distribute masks and recorded COVID awareness info via radio in 2020. In 2021, we ran 4 eye health screening and educational campaigns, and began to produce and distribute a children’s magazine to local schools to promote literacy, numeracy, and health education.
See our work in one page: New Sight One-Pager
The Ouesso Eye Hospital
Having established the Impfondo Eye Clinic, we were invited by local authorities to build an eye hospital in the town of Ouesso.
Ouesso is strategically located and would make eye care accessible for the entire country of Congo. We are passionate to make this a reality.
Our new eye hospital is under construction and is scheduled to open in 2023.
Donate below to make this eye hospital a reality for our patients.
The Ouesso Interim Eye Centre
While building the hospital, New Sight is committed to serve the eye care needs of the community and opened the Interim Eye Centre on 18 July 2019. The Department of Health lent us a space in their health centre.
On 5 November 2020, we moved to our current location at Rue André Sama. Our Interim Eye Centre has a reception, administration areas, as well as consultation and examination rooms. The larger space also allowed our training school to move into the same site. We also turned one of the rooms into an optical workshop – the first of its kind in Congo.
7,547 consultations
576 prescription glasses
592 patients screened
The Ouesso Interim Surgical Centre
As work continues for the construction of the Eye Hospital, we are excited to announce that our Interim Surgical Centre in Ouesso is almost ready. We have been able to rent a new building next to the Interim Eye Centre and connect the two spaces with a gate. We see so many patients who need surgical help and cannot wait to meet their needs in Ouesso.
See our progress through photos here: Interim Surgical Centre and the tour of IEC and ISC below.
35 surgeries performed since October 2022
100% positive patient feedback
Training school
New Sight is passionate about empowering the local community to ensure greater access to care. We have established a training program in Ouesso to recruit local Congolese people and employ them as staff for the future hospital. The program provides training and instruction for eye nurses, and extending beyond medical skills to provide IT and administrative experience, too.
15 introduction program trainees
5 nurse program trainees
Project Two Front Teeth
Project Two Front Teeth is all about kids seeing the needs of the world and acting on their ideas to fundraise.
The vision is to cultivate a culture where students SEE:
S – SEE the needs of the world
E – EXERCISE what is already in their hands to make a difference
E – EQUIP themselves to make an even bigger difference
See our Project Two Front Teeth page to learn more.
Children’s Magazine
New Sight Kids rekindled a long-held dream of the Samoutou Family to create a children’s magazine for the Congo community. With help from adult and children volunteers around the world, we created for schoolchildren a magazine with health education content (including eye care and dental health), literacy and numeracy activities, and bible stories. Not only will Congolese kids learn counting and writing, they will learn about keeping healthy, and of course having fun!
See our Children’s Magazine 5th Issue – again in colour! post for more.
>30 school programs
6 magazine issues
56,965 distributed to date
The Impfondo Eye Centre
The eye centre focuses on the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of blindness and visual impairment. It is the first eye surgical centre in the North of the Republic of the Congo. The eye clinic is situated on the grounds of Pioneer Christian Hospital in Impfondo, in buildings of what was once an abandoned communist youth camp. We have been providing our full services since 14 January 2013, performing over 1,500 consultations annually. The centre also creates greater access to treatment by delivering a free screening service for villages in the Likouala region.
Since our decision to build and move to a larger hospital in Ouesso, we have gifted the Impfondo eye centre to the Pioneer Christian Hospital. The nurses we have trained are running the eye centre in administrative and clinical tasks including eye tests, treatment, glasses, health education, emergencies and minor surgeries. We will provide ongoing remote support as well as regular visits with surgical campaigns to ensure that they continue to treat patients effectively.
9,477 consultations
362 surgeries performed since 2013
>2,000 patients screened
4 eye nurses trained
Donate below to provide the care for our patients.
