Listening skills can help Africa to see
Lene Øverland is the CEO of Orbis Africa, a nonprofit organisation that tries to end blindness and reverse it in cases where it is preventable. She tells Margaret Harris that leaders must attract people who have views different from their own
Orbis changes the lives of people who cannot see. There are 39 million blind people in the world, and, with effective interventions, 80% of them could see. My job is to convince business leaders to invest in us so we can give the gift of sight to millions of people in Africa. Blindness impedes people’s ability to be educated, it often prevents people from finding employment or a partner and can lead to a lonely life in poverty.
I have the pleasure of leading a team who have one mission at heart: to save sight and to make children see their mother’s smiles, husbands see their wives after years of blindness and grandmothers see their grandchildren after sightsaving surgery.
I spend a lot of time meeting companies, foundations and people to convince them that an investment in Orbis Africa will change their own appreciation of sight.
Tell me more about the Saving Sight in Africa programme.
As a South African-registered nonprofit company, Orbis Africa is affiliated to Orbis International, a nonprofit organisation that exists to make sure that no one is needlessly blind. Since 1982, Orbis has worked in 92 countries, enhanced the skill of more than 330 000 healthcare professionals and helped establish services that have provided quality eye care to more than 23 million people, seven million of whom were children.
What are some of the treatable reasons people go blind, and what can be done to avoid this?
Cataracts remain the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness, responsible for nearly half of all vision loss. Eighteen million people are avoidably blind due to cataracts, and as world demographics continue to change, particularly with a rapidly ageing population in middle- and low-income areas, this number will continue to rise.
Cataract remains the only major cause of blindness that is amenable to a single surgical treatment.
Untreated refractive error is the second major cause of avoidable blindness, and, while we do not directly work in this area, Orbis works with other organisations, providers and governments to ensure that adequate refractive services are integrated into our work. A pair of affordable spectacles can change a person’s life.
Paediatric eye disease is comparatively less common than other eye diseases and absolute numbers affected are low, but the consequences over the lifetime of an individual are enormous. The indirect costs of a life of blindness have been estimated at $200 000 (about R2.5-million). Timely management of paediatric eye disease can have huge cost benefits to countries.
Childhood blindness substantially increases the risk of childhood mortality. Orbis trains teams to reverse blindness in children and promotes children’s eye health as a vital component of comprehensive eye care.
What are some of the challenges you face in your work in rural areas?
Orbis Africa has worked extensively with Dr Susan Levine, a medical anthropologist at the University of Cape Town, and identified, through research, that poverty, transport difficulties and deep-rooted cultural practices are among the reasons treatable eye conditions do not receive attention.
We have further identified that the healthcare system in South Africa pays limited attention to eye conditions in children, as these conditions are rare — and limited attention is given to eye health during the training of health practitioners. For example, all the children who formed part of a study in KwaZulu-Natal had been immunised at clinics as babies, yet their eye conditions were not picked up, despite being congenital in nature and not due to an injury or other developmental causes.
If the nurse had been trained to recognise the early visible signs of cataracts, then the delays in seeking care for the eye condition would have been dramatically reduced.
If you had to change careers, what would you do?
I would consider working in the media space again, to once more investigate social phenomena and tell the stories of many. Another option would be to join the corporate sector in a strategic role to enhance public-private partnerships involving both for- and nonprofit companies.
What qualities do you need to do your job?
The ability to listen to and to trust others from inside and outside the company in giving you good advice as a leader, so that the company you lead can prosper.
It is essential that you surround yourself with people who are more knowledgeable and smarter than you are. It is also critical that you attract people who are different from yourself and who offer perspectives you would not naturally consider. A diverse team with practical wisdom, experiences and expertise will provide you with daily guidance and advice and ensure you make the right decisions.
What advice would you give someone just starting out in their career?
Get out of your comfort zone, use your knowledge to encounter new situations, and engage with people with different views from yours to expand your own horizon so you can learn and maximise your contributions at work. Make sure you have interests outside of work and spend quality time with your family. Take time out without e-mail, speaking on the phone and without your computer.