Deon Minnies is a public health management consultant, educator and monitoring, evaluation and learning advisor in health programmes addressing blindness and vision impairment and other disabilities.  He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Public Health from the University of Cape Town. He is employed as the Director of the Community Eye Health Institute (UCT-CEHI) in the Division of Ophthalmology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where he is (amongst others) responsible for convening and teaching in Postgraduate Studies in Community Eye Health, leading the Childhood Blindness Registry project and offering consultancy and training in health systems strengthening.