Eyecare in Africa

The trustees of the Spectacle Makers’ Charity have recently funded three initiatives designed to overcome the appalling lack of eye healthcare in Africa

Supporting Vision Aid Overseas’ Work in Ethiopia

VAO is now sufficiently established to be able to expand its work beyond merely carrying out eye tests and supplying spectacles to those in need in the Third World. In observance of the principle, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him to fish and feed him for life”, the Charity is increasingly looking at ways of allowing the poorer countries to develop their own indigenous optometric services. To that end, it needs to be able to provide equipment and training, and so the Spectacle Makers’ Charity provided the funding to keep a British optometrist in Ethiopia for six months during 2008.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the World, and has only two foreigntrained optometrist to look after its population of some 70,000 (plus). Accordingly when the University of Gondar announced that it was setting up the first ever domestic course for optometrists, VAO offered to supply the course leader, in the person of Gemma Peters. She launched the course in 2006 with 16 students, and in 2007 she was joined by another VAO volunteer, Ruhan du Plooy.

Gemma returned to the UK in June 2008 after two years’ dedicated teaching, but Ruhan stayed until the Ethipian students graduated in September 2008.

…and in Uganda…

The Spectacle Makers’ Charity has undertaken to meet the entire cost of establishing an optical workshop at the Jinja Hospital in Uganda in order to provide a more sustainable and continuous primary care service in that Country. Over the last fifteen years, VAO has sent many teams out there to conduct eye examinations and prescribe low cost pairs of spectacles. However, nothing happens in between such visits, and it is to fill that void that this project has been conceived. Jinja is a major city, strategically placed to allow the easiest access to the greatest number of patients. The optical workshop will become the foundation stone for a permanent primary, and maybe one day, secondary eyecare service in an area desperate for such facilities. A full report on its development will be published in subsequent editions of this newsletter.

...to say nothing of Tanzania.

As touched upon in the October 2007 issue, the Charity’s trustees are also keen to support the three-year multiprofessional education and training programme that has been initiated by the Ophthalmology Department of the Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Trust to combat childhood and diabetic eye disease. The aim is to develop and improve ophthalmology services both here in London and at the Muhumbili University of Health and Allied Services (MUHAS) in Tanzania through staff training and collaborative research.

Childhood cataract is a far bigger problem in Tanzania than in the UK, with over 300 operations being performed each year in a single hospital in Dar es Salaam alone, while diabetic eye disease is an increasing problem in the adult population in urban Tanzania. Dr Denise Mabey, “the Clinical Lead in Ophthalmology” at the NHS Trust, who is pictured below receiving a further grant towards the project at the October Court luncheon, said;

“During the programme surgeons, orthoptists and optometrists from the Trust will work with local teams in Tanzania to improve standards of care out there. For the Trust, this is seen not only as an opportunity to lead in the international campaign to improve healthcare services throughout Africa, but to work in a diverse cultural environment, to provide training opportunities for a multi-disciplinary team, to develop better working practices, and to gain exposure to, and enhancement of, skills in complex surgical procedures.”