Description
Tolani E
BOUT AOC
African Ophthalmology Council
The African Ophthalmology Council, AOC, is a supranational ophthalmology organization, whose aim is to represent the interests of national and sub regional ophthalmological societies across Sub Saharan Africa as well as that of the members of those societies. It is also a platform for ophthalmologists in the diaspora to contribute to the agenda of improving eye health care in sub Saharan Africa.
The AOC is a result of the initiative by the International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO) and Middle East Africa Council of Ophthalmology (MEACO) known as the Advisory Leadership Group (ALG) for sub Saharan Africa (SSA) with the aim to strengthen ophthalmology on the continent.
The ICO and MEACO leadership brought together about 40 ophthalmologists from SSA who were given leadership courses over a period of 2 years from February 2007 to March 2009. On completion of these courses, the ALG Alumni were convinced they needed to create a platform where those that benefitted from these leadership courses could pass on what they learnt and empower the next generation of ophthalmologists in sub Saharan Africa.
As a result of deliberation among the ALG alumni, it became evident that there is a need to create a forum to enable African ophthalmologists to communicate and exchange best practices on how to address the challenges of the profession in order to meet the VISION 2020 – The Right To Sight objectives.
Therefore, a forum called Africa Vision at Yahoo! Groups for Anglophone as well as Francophone ophthalmologists was launched in May 2009. The forum is open for all ophthalmologists in Africa as well as in diaspora and those ophthalmologists from other parts of the world who are interested in ophthalmology in Africa.
If you have not already joined one of these discussion groups, you could do so at the following: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricaVision for Anglophone Africa and at http://www.fr.groups.yahoo.com/groups/ophthalmo/ for Francophone Africa.
It was also deemed necessary to create a platform to promote ophthalmology and eye care in Sub-Saharan Africa. To this effect, African Ophthalmology Forum (AOF) was established in August 2009 in Mombasa, Kenya during the East African College of Ophthalmologist (EACO) Congress and was officially launched on June 6, 2010 during the World Ophthalmology Congress (WOC) that was held in Berlin, Germany.
It was also deemed necessary to create a supranational platform for harnessing the potential of Ophthalmologists and eye care in Sub Sahara Africa. This led to the formation of the African Ophthalmology Council (AOC) during the Ophthalmology Society of South Africa (OSSA) Congress in March 2014 in line with the AOF Strategic Plan. The AOC was officially launched on April 3, 2014 during the World Ophthalmology Congress (WOC) 2014 in Tokyo, Japan.