According to the World Health Organization, more than 800 million people around the world suffer from presbyopia – the age-related loss of near vision – and need basic reading glasses to help them see. Yet, according to the WHO, in many low-income countries, less than one in four people who need glasses have them.
In recent years, Sangeeta Kalita has watched as her mother and mother-in-law visit a local temple – called a ‘Namghar’ – in the Indian state of Assam and return disappointed.
On each visit, he hoped to read sacred Hindu texts, but due to vision problems, he faced a lot of problems recognising small letters in the book, explains Kalita.
Kalita says that for her family, getting reading glasses was too complicated and expensive. While in many high-income countries, readers are available in all types of stores, in low-resource settings, obtaining a pair often requires a trip to a hospital or a specialised optical shop, usually in a large city.
Kalita is trying to change that.
In northeastern India, he is part of a team testing a new effort to tackle the challenge of vision care in remote areas. The idea involves the country’s vast network of post offices.
Quick eye test at an unusual location
Kalita used to be a school teacher. Now, she spends her days at a red and white kiosk that faces the bright white walls of the post office in Rangia town.
From that vantage point, she keeps track of customers arriving. Some come there for mail packages, while others make use of the variety of services offered at Indian post offices, such as opening and accessing small savings accounts. Kalita notices how they do their work.
“Many old people come in who are not even able to fill out the deposit forms,” she says.
Only when she sees them struggling does she come forward. She comes over and asks if they would like to have a quick eye test. If so, she invites them to a kiosk with the words “Get a free eye exam and high-quality glasses here” written across the top. Kalita can tell if she needs reading glasses after working through some simple tests in the spiral-bound book. And if they do, they walk out with a free pair.
Sangeeta Kalita, an eye check-up volunteer, helps customers at Rangia Post Office.
The idea for this model came from a partnership between the WHO and the Universal Postal Union or UPU. “With an estimated 680,000 post offices in operation globally, postal services offer a unique opportunity to reach remote and underserved areas,” the report states.
The plan was to enter the world’s largest postal network: India Post, which has over 150,000 offices.
“The whole idea was that we focus on an established channel that has reach, that has infrastructure, that has people,” says Shweta Verma, deputy director of programmes and operations. VisionSpring India.
Under a pilot program run by VisionSpring, more than 5,000 people were screened across five post offices in the state of Assam between December 2025 and May 2026, according to Verma.
Verma says that 80% of those who received glasses were first-time wearers. “This evidence tells us that there was no screening or programme for eye health in the area before the pilot,” she says.
convincing the skeptics
In addition to making everyday tasks easier, getting reading glasses can make a big difference to a person’s income. This is especially true in the state of Assam, which is known for tea production.
A study published in Lancet Global Health found that reading glasses increased the productivity of tea pickers by about 22% because they have to see which leaves to pluck and are paid based on the quality of their harvest.
Verma says, during the post office pilot, he had to earn the support of postal employees and postmasters.
Initially, she says, “We got a lot of buy-in from higher-ups,” but postal workers were sceptical and worried about how this new venture would affect their workloads. So Verma’s team hired and trained outsiders, including Kalita, to implement the programme. “Once the programme was launched, there was also a lot of enthusiasm from the postmasters,” Verma says.
Babul is the borough postmaster where Kalita works. Since the pilot project began in December 2025, he says more than 1,000 people have come to his post office for eye tests, and many have started using postal services. He says this boost to his business is enough to give him hope that the pilot will become permanent.
The current pilot is scheduled to end in September. Then, Ella Goodwin, VisionSpring’s CEO, says they will look at all the data and consider funding before deciding whether to continue or expand. WHO and UPU have expressed interest in taking this model worldwide.
beyond vision care
While VisionSpring says the model is a first for eyeglasses, the hope is that the venture shows POs can be used “for a wide range of health-related services around the world,” the WHO and UPU report said.
Dr Elizabeth Rosenthal, a physician and a senior contributing editor to KFF Health News, has written about rebuilding post offices to meet medical needs. She says France and Japan are strong examples where such initiatives are already happening.
In France, for a small fee, letter carriers can check on elderly individuals, she says, “just stopping in and chatting and seeing if there’s food in the house?” Are they able to get around properly?”
Mantu Das, Rangia, conducts vision tests at the post office.
Something similar also happens in Japan. And in some parts of the US, carriers may see a pile of mail and alert a local agency to initiate a welfare check.
She says one thing inspires her at Kalita’s post office in India: the smiles she sees on people’s faces after they deliver their glasses. She says it makes her feel “very accomplished and also happy.”
She says she is thinking of the teacher who no longer has a headache every day. Her mother and mother-in-law can now read holy scriptures. And the tailor never knew that reading glasses could be so life-changing – that getting them could be as easy as swinging by the post office.
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