ESCRS news and updates

SUPPORTING OXFAM During 2015, ESCRS continued its partnership with Oxfam to bring safe drinking water, proper sanitation facilities and public health information to communities in need. Thanks to ESCRS, 35,606 vulnerable people will benefit from an integrated community project focusing on water, sanitation, hygiene and protection in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. They are drawn from the Nyanga, Hunde, Hutu and Tutsi communities, and include families returning home following a 20-year conflict between rebels and government forces that forced them to flee and live in refugee camps. There was a prevalence of unprotected water sources in the region and increased demand on the limited existing water and sanitation infrastructure. Poor access to latrine and sanitation facilities, coupled with a lack of information about the importance of good hygiene, led to unnecessary illnesses and deaths from diseases such as cholera and diarrhoea. Investment by ESCRS has helped combat the spread of these waterborne diseases along with water-washed diseases that affect the eyes, such as trachoma and conjunctivitis.

iLearn TASK LIST

Mentors and trainers have a love of teaching and a passion for sharing new ideas. There are few, if any, who love the administrative side of searching out educational activities, assigning them to their residents and checking that they actually do them. ESCRS iLearn has a solution.

Trainers looking for useful educational activities for their residents can find a range of high-quality interactive and assessed courses on ESCRS iLearn, covering visual optics, cataract, refractive and cornea.

The new Task List will also allow trainers to identify and organise a list of courses they want their residents to take over time. Deadlines can be applied and email reminders sent, so the trainer doesn’t have to check up on what is due and when.

Task lists can be saved, so if you want each set of residents to take a similar set of activities, there is no need to rebuild a new list – just assign the list to your new group of residents.

To start using the Task List, email the ESCRS eLearning team at: elearning@escrs.org