More eye care training for the Pacific

Transcript

The Fred Hollows Foundation in New Zealand says the new regional eye care centre in Solomon Islands will fill an important training gap for tertiary eye care in the Pacific.

The US$3.2 million facility which is funded by the New Zealand Aid Programme will open on the 22nd of July increasing eye operation facilities in the region by nearly a third.

The Executive Director of the Foundation, Andrew Bell, told Koroi Hawkins the centre has the added benefit of built-in training facilities which will help further the development of eye care professionals in the region.

ANDREW BELL: As a regional tertiary centre you are able to set up a place where countries within close proximity such as Vanuatu, which is really just a short flight away, would be able to access for the more complicated cases. And so the surrounding countries, rather than having to travel all the way back to Sydney or to Auckland, patients will be able to travel to a regional eye centre in Honiara that is one aspect to it. Another aspect is that it will participate in the regional training process so that people who need to have additional training such as in the treatment of diabetes will be able to spend time at the regional art centre in Honiara to receive that training. So we do envisage that it will have a regional role within the Pacific region, but also its closest neighbour is Papua New Guinea which also has a long way to go in terms of building the eye care work force. So rather than people having to travel all the way to Fiji it is a closer stop and so it gives us another regional centre that we can work in tandem with the Pacific Eye Institute in Suva and together they can give coverage to the whole of the Pacific region.

KOROI HAWKINS: And the Solomon Islands medical infrastructure and service isn't one of the best resourced or run in the region. I am assuming that the ongoing cost of this centre will be taken on by New Zealand Aid and Fred Hollows for a while?

AB: The beauty of the regional eye centre is that we designed it to run for minimal cost and so its entirely off the grid in terms of power. Its solar power provides all the power needs. It carries its own seventy thousand litre water tank. So it will not have any need of water. It has a composting toilet sewer system so that there is no burden on the local sewer system. So it entirely is self-contained within itself as a centre. And so the main thing is it just needs an annual service for things like the water filtration system, the HEPA air-conditioning system, and so we might give some support from New Zealand the Fred Hollows Foundation to help them in terms of that annual maintenance. But the cost of it has actually been all borne upfront and so this sustainable project has been put in place where the ongoing costs will be minimal and because they will already employ the doctors and nurses that will fill the place. The actual cost of transferring to this new centre is very little.