Welcome to BICO
___________________________________________________________________________Blantyre Institute for Community Ophthalmology
BICO was founded in 2008 with the mission of contributing to the prevention and control of blindness in Malawi and neighbouring countries in the Southern part of Africa through conducting practical research, teaching, training, consultancy and advocacy in eye care delivery.
ABOUT MALAWI
Malawi is a small poor country in the southern part of Africa which has 13 million inhabitants. 86% of the inhabitants are rural peasant farmers. In terms of eye health, Malawi has the best public eye infrastructure in southern Africa :5 dedicated Eye hospitals – 4 Government Lions eye hospitals - one located in each city (Blantyre, Lilongwe, Zomba & Mzuzu), and a fifth mission NGO eye hospital supported by CBM. Unfortunately there is a severe shortage of eye health workers in the country, with only 9 ophthalmologists (1 ophthalmologists per 1.4 million population), and approximately 70 midlevel ophthalmic personnel covering the entire country.
The idea to start the institute was conceptualised after realising that despite nearly 10 years after the launch of the VISION 2020: the Right to Sight; the global initiative to eliminate avoidable blindness and the various successes/ achievements in other areas of the worlds; the southern most part of Africa had still not made much progress especially in the area of research on practical preventative community eye care blindness programmes. Read more.
BLANTYRE INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY OPHTHALMOLOGY- MALAWI
