Simon Bush

Simon Bush is the Director of African Alliances and Advocacy at Sightsavers, an international NGO helping people with visual impairments in developing countries. Simon’s work includes travelling to monitor Sightsavers projects, advocating for changes to policy from top decision makers, and developing approaches to social inclusion and inclusive education for the blind and people with disabilities. He also has the important task of managing the relationships with Sightsavers’ public-private partnerships that concern Sightsavers work with potentially blinding neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), such as trachoma and onchoceriasis.

Simon is currently Chair of the NGDO NTD Network , a group of NGOs working on NTDs such as onchoceriasis, trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiaisis and soil transmitted helminths.

Simon has been living and working in Africa and the Middle East since 1983. After studying African politics and history at university, he moved to Sudan and began his career as a teacher and then moving to the Ministry of Education in Khartoum and then at the Sudanese embassy in London recruiting teachers to work in Sudan’s secondary schools. After a number of years at the British Council working in Eritrea, West Bank & Gaza, Ethiopia, Sudan and Lesotho, Simon joined Sightsavers in 1999 as Regional Director for West Africa and is now based in Accra, Ghana.

Simon’s passion for eliminating NTDs began when he started working for Sightsavers and learned more about the diseases and their prevalence. He was inspired by how treatment and prevention of NTDs - often carried out by the communities themselves - can dramatically change people’s lives.