Rural & Urban Eye Care (RUEC)

Rural & Urban Eye Care (RUEC) is CRUD’s eye-care initiative for the rural and peri-urban communities of Habiganj District — people with little access to a health facility, many of them elderly or on low incomes, and women and children at risk of preventable blindness. It is supported by Deutsches Blindenhilfswerk (DBHW) in Duisburg, Germany, and its programme year runs from April 2025 to March 2026.

Field teams hold free eye camps at set locations in villages. Patients are examined and their sight is tested; glasses are prescribed, free or at a nominal price for those who cannot pay. People with cataract or glaucoma are identified and arranged for treatment, and free surgery is arranged for the very poor, with priority given to women and children. Camps are run with AMRI — the Akhter Medical & Research Institute eye hospital in Habiganj — and with local allied persons who help host and organise them. German eye surgeon Dr Rüdiger Kroff has joined camps to examine patients and help select those who need cataract surgery.

Around the camps, RUEC’s work includes cataract surgery, eye-health screening in schools, community meetings on eye hygiene and diabetes-related blindness, and training for community health workers, who act as the first point of contact in their villages, carry out basic vision checks and direct patients to care.

A record that can be checked. DBHW’s previous support for CRUD’s rural eye camps — the project “Elimination of Avoidable Blindness in Habiganj”, April 2023 to March 2025 — was independently audited by Saiful Islam & Co., Chartered Accountants, who gave an unmodified opinion on both years’ accounts (noting that the project’s continuation depended on the grant being renewed). Its approved target from the NGO Affairs Bureau was 11,500 beneficiaries; the numbers certified by the local Upazila Nirbahi Officer were 5,750 direct and 20,000 indirect beneficiaries a year. In its final audited year, 2024–25, income from the DBHW grant and local contributions totalled BDT 2,670,917 and was spent in full: about 52% on staff, 25% on camps and outreach, 20% on administration and 3% on servicing medical equipment. The audited statements are available on request.