Final evaluation report for the NOVA project, Eye Care/Haiti

Final evaluation covers the period 10/86 to 2/90. Despite the fact that project activities were carried out under extremely difficult logistics and during a period of political turmoil, Eye Care was generally able to adhere to its timetable and achieve its objectives. Eye Care made new outreach services available, substantially increasing the accessibility and utilization of primary health care services for children and mothers and the proportion of children receiving Vitamin A supplementation. Eye Care's research study, the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, was successful and probably helped to strengthen the project's service delivery component. Community acceptance of the project is demonstrated by the progressive increase in the rate of coverage over the life of the project. Worthy of particular mention is that the project was designed and carried out entirely by Haitians. On the negative side, the project was hampered by a shortage of field managers; lack of clear plans for training, monitoring, and evaluation; and unnecessary hand tabulation of data. In addition, extreme delays in data coding resulted in a lost opportunity for detection of differences in morbidity between treatment groups, and for adequate supervision and improvement of data quality. Additional TA and a midterm evaluation could have improved the quality of interventions and efficiency of operations.