ORBIS GONDAR PROJECT - ESCRS · ORBIS GONDAR PROJECT ESCRS supporting establishment of paediatric...
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EUROTIMES | Volume 17 | Issue 11 J ust one year after its official launch, an ESCRS-funded project in collaboration with ORBIS is already starting to make significant headway in the battle to save the sight of thousands of children in North West Ethiopia. “It is still very early days but a lot of progress has been made in putting the proper structures in place to develop a fully functional paediatric eye care service at Gondar Referral Hospital in order to serve the eye care needs of the local population,” Allan Thompson of ORBIS told EuroTimes. Starting in 2011, the ORBIS Gondar Project has been working to establish a fully equipped Child Eye Health Tertiary Facility (CEHTF) with a trained paediatric eye care team at Gondar University Referral Hospital to ensure delivery of high-quality eye care in the Amhara regional state, located about 725km north of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. With an estimated 6,300 blind children in the Amhara regional state, and another 31,500 children with low vision, ORBIS set out to strengthen the referral network and follow-up system within the local region and raise awareness of the importance of seeking prompt medical advice for children’s eye conditions to ensure early detection and treatment. Asamere Tsegaw MD, one of the ophthalmologists in Gondar who recently completed ESCRS/ORBIS-sponsored short- term surgical training in India, believes that the CEHTF will have a real impact in tackling blindness and low vision in the region. “As well as establishing the paediatric eye care facility, which includes training specialised personnel specifically for children’s ophthalmology, we have also been developing the medical infrastructure in terms of equipment, management structures and so forth. One year has now passed since the opening of the centre and the project is already making a difference,” he said. “Although the current most common causes of childhood blindness observed in our patients are childhood cataracts, nutritional deficiencies and refractive error, we expect more childhood retinal problems such as retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in the future as the general healthcare system of Ethiopia is expected to improve and more premature infants survive. My recent ESCRS/ ORBIS-sponsored short-term training in India was an important addition to the skills of the paediatric eye care team in Gondar to better take care of a wide range of childhood eye problems and prevent unnecessary blindness,” Dr Tsegaw added. A key part of the ORBIS project lies in ensuring that the local ophthalmic and healthcare personnel receive the best possible hands-on training to deal with the specific needs of paediatric patients, explains Mr Thompson. “This is where the ESCRS funding has made a huge difference. It has contributed in a variety of ways, by helping to finance a recent hospital-based training programme in Gondar led by Irish ophthalmic surgeon Donal Brosnahan, and also supporting fellowships and other training programmes for local ophthalmologists and other personnel. The funding really was instrumental in getting this project off the ground,” he said. The importance of running training courses specifically adapted to the needs of the local physicians has played a key part in the success of the ORBIS-Gondar partnership, points out Yared Assefa, head of the Ophthalmology Department at the University of Gondar. “Dr Brosnahan has been coming for many years to Ethiopia and he provides high-quality hands-on training in treating paediatric cataract and strabismus, which are really a major problem in our region. The prevalence of blindness from these conditions is about five times the level that it would be in Europe,” he said. With a catchment population of roughly 16 million people in the Amhara area, Dr Assefa acknowledges the difficult task facing the Gondar team in catering to the ocular health of such a large and widely dispersed population. “As well as our own direct catchment area we also have adjacent regions which are not well served in specialised healthcare such as paediatric ophthalmology. So what we are planning, and have already started to do, is to make our hospital a centre of excellence, first in paediatric ophthalmology, and then under the umbrella of this paediatric ophthalmology, to strengthen and extend our other ophthalmic services. To that end, we have started training general health personnel in the region, enabling them to refer, diagnose or detect childhood and adult eye problems that need intervention,” he said. The referral network will also be extended into the education system, said Dr Assefa. “We are also planning to train school teachers to detect refractive errors in their schools and to be able to refer students to the secondary health centres or directly to our centre in the case of severe problems,” he added. In addition to building a robust paediatric eye care team, Gondar University Hospital is also looking to improve the quality of epidemiological data from the region. “We have started to conduct research in the past few months on the knowledge, attitude and practice of childhood blindness in the Amhara region,” explained Mulusew Asferaw MD, a paediatric ophthalmologist who recently completed an ORBIS- sponsored fellowship training in paediatric ophthalmology at CCBRT Disability Hospital, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. “This is very important indeed to the ongoing ORBIS project so that we can better target our care to the actual needs of the population. And it will also be a great help in assessing the actual impact of the project on the prevalence of blindness in the region,” he said. Allan Thompson – [email protected] Yared Assefa – [email protected] Mulusew Asferaw – [email protected] Asamere Tsegaw – [email protected] contacts ORBIS GONDAR PROJECT ESCRS supporting establishment of paediatric eye care team at Gondar University Hospital in Ethiopia by Dermot McGrath in Milan 10 Special Focus GLOBAL OPHTHALMOLOGY Read EuroTimes on the move! Our new mobile website is designed for tablets and smartphones and includes content from the print edition of the magazine. Visit the new EuroTimes mobile website at http://m.eurotimes.org From left to right: Allan Thompson, ORBIS; Mulusew Asferaw, assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Gondar; Yared Assefa, head of the Ophthalmology Department at the University of Gondar; and Asamere Tsegaw, assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Gondar
Transcript of ORBIS GONDAR PROJECT - ESCRS · ORBIS GONDAR PROJECT ESCRS supporting establishment of paediatric...
EUROTIMES | Volume 17 | Issue 11
Just one year after its official launch, an EsCRs-funded project in collaboration with ORBis is already starting to make significant headway in the battle to save
the sight of thousands of children in North West Ethiopia.
“it is still very early days but a lot of progress has been made in putting the proper structures in place to develop a fully functional paediatric eye care service at Gondar Referral hospital in order to serve the eye care needs of the local population,” Allan Thompson of ORBis told EuroTimes.
starting in 2011, the ORBis Gondar Project has been working to establish a fully equipped Child Eye health Tertiary Facility (CEhTF) with a trained paediatric eye care team at Gondar University Referral hospital to ensure delivery of high-quality eye care in the Amhara regional state, located about 725km north of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
With an estimated 6,300 blind children in the Amhara regional state, and another 31,500 children with low vision, ORBis set out to strengthen the referral network and follow-up system within the local region and raise awareness of the importance of seeking prompt medical advice for children’s eye conditions to ensure early detection and treatment.
Asamere Tsegaw MD, one of the ophthalmologists in Gondar who recently completed EsCRs/ORBis-sponsored short-term surgical training in india, believes that the CEhTF will have a real impact in tackling blindness and low vision in the region.
“As well as establishing the paediatric eye care facility, which includes training specialised personnel specifically for children’s ophthalmology, we have also been developing the medical infrastructure in terms of equipment, management structures and so forth. One year has now passed since
the opening of the centre and the project is already making a difference,” he said.
“Although the current most common causes of childhood blindness observed in our patients are childhood cataracts, nutritional deficiencies and refractive error, we expect more childhood retinal problems such as retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in the future as the general healthcare system of Ethiopia is expected to improve and more premature infants survive. My recent EsCRs/ORBis-sponsored short-term training in india was an important addition to the skills of the paediatric eye care team in Gondar to better take care of a wide range of childhood eye problems and prevent unnecessary blindness,” Dr Tsegaw added.
A key part of the ORBis project lies in ensuring that the local ophthalmic and healthcare personnel receive the best possible hands-on training to deal with the specific
needs of paediatric patients, explains Mr Thompson.
“This is where the EsCRs funding has made a huge difference. it has contributed in a variety of ways, by helping to finance a recent hospital-based training programme in Gondar led by irish ophthalmic surgeon Donal Brosnahan, and also supporting fellowships and other training programmes for local ophthalmologists and other personnel. The funding really was instrumental in getting this project off the ground,” he said.
The importance of running training courses specifically adapted to the needs of the local physicians has played a key part in the success of the ORBis-Gondar partnership, points out Yared Assefa, head of the Ophthalmology Department at the University of Gondar.
“Dr Brosnahan has been coming for
many years to Ethiopia and he provides high-quality hands-on training in treating paediatric cataract and strabismus, which are really a major problem in our region. The prevalence of blindness from these conditions is about five times the level that it would be in Europe,” he said.
With a catchment population of roughly 16 million people in the Amhara area, Dr Assefa acknowledges the difficult task facing the Gondar team in catering to the ocular health of such a large and widely dispersed population.
“As well as our own direct catchment area we also have adjacent regions which are not well served in specialised healthcare such as paediatric ophthalmology. so what we are planning, and have already started to do, is to make our hospital a centre of excellence, first in paediatric ophthalmology, and then under the umbrella of this paediatric ophthalmology, to strengthen and extend our other ophthalmic services. To that end, we have started training general health personnel in the region, enabling them to refer, diagnose or detect childhood and adult eye problems that need intervention,” he said.
The referral network will also be extended into the education system, said Dr Assefa.
“We are also planning to train school teachers to detect refractive errors in their schools and to be able to refer students to the secondary health centres or directly to our centre in the case of severe problems,” he added.
in addition to building a robust paediatric eye care team, Gondar University hospital is also looking to improve the quality of epidemiological data from the region.
“We have started to conduct research in the past few months on the knowledge, attitude and practice of childhood blindness in the Amhara region,” explained Mulusew Asferaw MD, a paediatric ophthalmologist who recently completed an ORBis-sponsored fellowship training in paediatric ophthalmology at CCBRT Disability hospital, Dar es salaam, Tanzania.
“This is very important indeed to the ongoing ORBis project so that we can better target our care to the actual needs of the population. And it will also be a great help in assessing the actual impact of the project on the prevalence of blindness in the region,” he said.
Allan Thompson – [email protected] Assefa – [email protected] Asferaw – [email protected] Tsegaw – [email protected]
cont
acts
ORBIS GONDAR PROJECTESCRS supporting establishment of paediatric eye care team at Gondar University Hospital in Ethiopia by Dermot McGrath in Milan
10 special focus
GLOBAL OPHTHALMOLOGY
Read EuroTimes on the move!
Our new mobile website is designed for tablets and smartphones and includes content from the print edition of the magazine.
Visit the new EuroTimes mobile website at
http://m.eurotimes.org
From left to right: Allan Thompson, ORBIS; Mulusew Asferaw, assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Gondar; Yared Assefa, head of the Ophthalmology Department at the University of Gondar; and Asamere Tsegaw, assistant professor of
ophthalmology at the University of Gondar
