| Health: A VISION TO RESTORE VISION |
80,000 islanders live with blindness
Dev Nadkarni
Of the estimated 80,000 Pacific Islanders living with blindness, as many as 80 percent owe their sightlessness to cataracts, which in most cases can be treated.
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An eye surgery in progress... in a make-shift operation theatre in the Pacific Islands.
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A lot of the blindness in the Pacific islands would fall in the preventable category only if eye care facilities considered basic in other parts of the world were easily available.
Lack of adequate facilities also hampers effective treatment of infections that often lead to otherwise preventable complications. Other than cataracts, common afflictions in the Pacific islands are pterigium, glaucoma as well as trauma owing to a range of causes. Many more, about 250,000, have significant vision impairment that spectacles can help in most cases.
The Fred Hollows Foundation, an Australia-based not for profit NGO, has been working in the Pacific Islands building both eye care facilities and local capacity to run them efficiently, just as it has been doing in 20 developing countries across the world over the past 15 years.
“The foundation’s vision is of a world where no one is needlessly blind,” says Kelly Hawkins, its Auckland-based communications manager. Over the years its programmes, which have included training surgeons, doctors and nurses as well as building eye care facilities and helping run them has helped restore sight to more than a million people, she says.
While the foundation’s Australian headquarters oversees projects in the rest of the world, its New Zealand operation is charged with programmes in the Pacific Islands region.
It runs various initiatives in several countries including Vanuatu, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Tonga and Papua New Guinea.
The foundation’s activities are largely funded by donations but many of its programmes are run on a cost recovery basis. Ministries of Health in most Pacific Islands countries fund cataract surgery. But the limited number of eye nurses and doctors who are able to find patients and perform the surgery restricts the volume of surgery in these countries.
In addition, irregular supplies of surgical consumables like intraocular lenses further make surgeries difficult and cause delays in patients for whom care is needed urgently. In some cases, like hospitals in PNG, says Hawkins, there are simply no funds to purchase cataract surgery consumables.
One of the benefits of the Fred Hollows Foundation’s cost recovery programme in PNG is that patients who would not otherwise get surgery because they cannot afford to purchase the surgical supplies themselves, are subsidised by those patients who can pay. Prescription glasses are also provided on a cost recovery basis but there is a separate fund to provide glasses free of cost in deserving cases.
The foundation works closely with local governments, communities and educational institutions.
“We always work alongside the Ministry of Health and in PNG, our partners include the National Department of Health, hospitals, University of PNG and Divine Word University.
“In Timor, we partner with Fo Naroman Timor-Leste. In Fiji, we are with Vision 2020 Fiji and the Fiji School of Medicine,” says Kelly.
In terms of building capacity in the islands, the foundation runs a range of courses including post-graduate and master’s programmes at its Pacific Eye Institute which was based in the Solomon Islands until recently and now moved to Suva in Fiji.
The foundation also plans to deliver the courses in Madang in PNG as also in Timor. Diploma and Master of Opthalmology programmes are currently on offer at the University of Papua New Guinea. Islands governments generally employ doctors and nurses trained through these programmes.
Since its inception in 1992, the foundation has helped train 750 eye surgeons and thousands of nurses worldwide.
In the islands region, it has trained doctors and nurses in Niue, the Solomons, Fiji, Nauru, Samoa, East Timor, Vanuatu and PNG.
Part of its programme is also to build eye care facilities and help run them besides helping governments develop national programmes for eye care as it did in Vanuatu. It takes visiting teams of expert surgeons, doctors, nurses and technicians on training missions and camps around the Pacific islands.
The foundation aims to build sustainable infrastructure with modern computers, instruments and trained personnel to run them.
The Vanuatu experience has been the most successful so far in the region for the foundation.
As well as helping the government develop a national eye programme, it identified personnel and trained them and with the commitment of three years of support from the government, the programme has now attained sustainability.
The Pacific Eye Institute that was based in Honiara moved out of the country late last year for reasons observers say are political.
Noted Solomon Islands’ opthalmologist Dr John Szetu heads the Pacific Eye Institute and is currently setting up the training facility in Suva.
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