THE VISION 2020 ACTION PROGRAMME FOR LATIN AMERICA
The offices of VISION 2020 Latin America are located in Asuncion, the capital city of Paraguay, which is also the place of residence of Dr. Rainald Duerksen, regional chairperson for Latin America of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and Dr. Van Lansingh, the regional coordinator.

The region is very diverse, and faces health problems typical of developing countries as well as those of the developed nations, but with far fewer resources. Due to this diversity, the organization's tasks have been divided among various subcommittees (Advocacy and Resource Mobilization, Childhood Blindness/ Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), Refractive Errors, Cataract, Low Vision, Diabetic Retinopathy, Glaucoma, Residency Curricula and Continuous Medical Education and Monitoring), each of which is chaired by experts in the field.

Each subcommittee is responsible for developing a country by country situational analysis appropriate to the local context, and has developed an action plan for training and programme implementation. The current priority of the office is to help every member country establish a national VISION 2020 committee by the end of 2007 with input from PAHO (Pan-American Health Organization) and PAAO (Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology). At the same time, we help them to either develop or upgrade their National Prevention of Blindness Plan so that all have one by the end 2008.