In the Pacific, 4 out of 5 people who are blind don’t need to be; their condition is preventable or treatable. The new mobile eye clinic for Fiji will allow for thousands more cataract surgeries and diabetic retinopathy laser treatments to be performed each year. Photo: Michael Bradley - Fred Hollows Foundation
The Fred Hollows Foundation is this week shipping its mobile eye clinic to Fiji where it will serve rural people throughout Fiji over the next five years.
The clinic, which cost 780 thousand New Zealand dollars to build, is funded through donations from the New Zealand public, and its operation will be supported by New Zealand and Fijian companies and organisations.
The executive director of the Fred Hollows Foundation, Andrew Bell, says will be an exciting time for eye care in Fiji and the Pacific if this concept can be adapted to other island countries.
"The beauty of eye care is that it is highly transportable. The difficulty with the patients that we treat is that they are often elderly and they are usually blind. So you put all those factors together a mobile eye clinic is just a fantastic solution to a problem that has got very few solutions."
In the Pacific, 4 out of 5 people who are blind don't need to be; their condition is preventable or treatable. The new mobile eye clinic for Fiji will allow for thousands more cataract surgeries and diabetic retinopathy laser treatments to be performed each year.
