Learning from a five year, 10 country trachoma partnership

The Issue

Trachoma is the leading infectious cause of blindness globally, causing blindness or visual impairment of 1.9 million people (WHO, 2019). In 2014, the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) designed two £80m five-year programmes for the adoption and scale-up of the SAFE strategy to tackle trachoma across 10 countries in Africa. The two programmes were implemented by members of the International Coalition for Trachoma Control, through Sightsavers, the grant manager.

Tropical Health was commissioned by The Trust and DFID to conduct an end-of-programme learning exercise.

Our Approach

Using a participatory, mixed-methods approach, the Tropical Health team identified, explored and documented what worked well and what could have been done differently. Data was collected from a range of sources, including a survey targeting 110 stakeholders; a review of documents; key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and in-country learning workshops with stakeholders.

Tropical Health synthesized transferable lessons into a high-level learning paper for practitioners and policymakers, published by Sightsavers and funders; and a final report with additional detailed learnings for programme stakeholders.

Our Findings

The findings were presented at the World Health Organization Alliance for the Global Elimination of Trachoma by 2020 (GET2020) meeting in June 2019, and used to inform strategies and approaches beyond GET2020. The findings also informed ongoing DFID-funded trachoma programme development, and the International Coalition for Trachoma Control’s 2020-2025 Strategic Plan.