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About Us
Our origins
Dr. Slade of the St. George Eye Center first met Dr. Mangombe when visiting Zimbabwe in 2016. Dr. Slade was representing Latter-daySaint Charities on a humanitarian project. About a year later, Dr. Mangombe came to the US and did an international observership at the Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah. Shortly after this, Dr. Mangombe approached Dr. Slade about launching a humanitarian program for the indigent people of Zimbabwe. Tovonatese Charity is the product of this partnership. This inaugural year, we invite everyone to donate so that we can all see.
Background
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country in the sub-Sahara region with a population of slightly over 15million (recent census data). Economic activities in the country include mining, agriculture, and tourism. The capital city of Zimbabwe is Harare with a population of 1.5million. There is lack of adequate eye services in Zimbabwe , a population of 14 million being serviced by about 35o ophthalmologists (1 ophthalmologist per 400 000).
Vision 2020
VISION 2020 was a global initiative that was aiming to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020.Unfortunately in Zimbabwe we could not archive the target due to the following reasons: Unavailability of affordable and accessible eye services, Lack of eye doctors in the remote areas. Lack of funding for eye services, lack of dedicated eye clinics, general economic collapse of our country, There have not been studies on assessing the real burden of cataracts in the country but some RAAB (Rapid Assessment of AvoidableBlindness) carried out revealed that the commonest eye conditions requiring urgent attention are: Cataract, glaucoma, refractive errors and trachoma. TheNational Eye Strategy found out that there are about 62000 people who need cataract operation in Zimbabwe in 2016. In Harare there is only one unit offering eye services and patients are required to pay for these services. Most patients do not have transport to the capital city for attention. These challenges have been worsened further by the COVID 19 pandemic. The cataract surgery backlog increased during the lockdown period from 2020 to date (2021). Most public eye institution were not offering elective cataract or eye surgeries due to the COVID19 pandemic. Therefore there is need to have a facility to reach out to the disadvantaged communities and offer cataract surgeries.
