Dr Fei Long, Country Manager
Dr Fei Long fully understands how impaired vision, let alone blindness, can limit a person’s opportunities in life. After graduating from high school just after China’s Cultural Revolution, Dr Long’s dream was to study at an air force college. This dream seems fitting as Fei means ‘to fly’ in Chinese, however, Dr Long passed the written entry examinations but failed the physical tests due to the refractive error in his eyes. “If my vision was good, I would probably be working for the China Air Force now” laughs Dr Long.
Although Dr Long’s eye condition can easily be improved by wearing glasses, he is acutely aware that other eye conditions, such as cataracts, require surgery which can be unreachable by many of the nine million people who are blind in China. Reasons for this are the cost of surgery, the patient’s proximity to hospitals that have the capacity to perform modern cataract surgery, or simply due to the fact that potential patients do not know that sight restoration is medically possible. “Good eye sight is a fundamental human right; no one should go on being blind if they don’t have to be,” says Dr Long.
As The Fred Hollows Foundation’s Country Manager for China, Dr Fei Long oversees the implementation of The Fred Hollows Foundation’s Program in China, which includes a Cataract Surgery Training Project. The program aims to develop a sustainable model of high volume cataract surgery in Jiangxi Province; one of the poorer provinces located in the south with one of the highest rates of blindness in China. Approximately 451,500 (1.05%) blind people and a further 249,400 (0.58%) people with low vision live in Jiangxi Province and the number of people with cataract blindness is approximately 184,900 (0.43%) with an additional incidence of 29,500 cases each year.
The Fred Hollows Foundation’s Program in China consists of various Projects designed to address cataract blindness treatment and prevention head on. For example, the Cataract Surgery Training Project trains surgeons, ophthalmic nurses, ward nurses and administrators from participating hospitals so that staff have the capacity to perform high quality and high volume cataract surgery. Additionally, The Foundation has held just under 900 eye clinics and trained village eye doctors in rural areas of Jiangxi Province so that they can screen cataract patients and make referrals to larger hospitals. Dr. Long also oversees other Projects in the China Program, including the establishment of an Eye Care Unit with a paediatric focus at the Gaoan City People’s Hospital and is planning to establish an Eye Hospital in Jiangxi Province which services the needs of the poor in that Province.
Although training is a large part of The Foundation’s work in China, Dr Long is adamant that training does not merely mean showing local practitioners the “correct” way to do things in a hierarchical manner. It is more about The Foundation facilitating the training process and introducing ideas, skills and procedures that will enable local practitioners to draw upon their expertise and local knowledge. “Local medical practitioners are very smart, one of The Foundation’s roles is to provide them with the opportunity to both upskill and share their knowledge,” says Dr Long.
Originally from Chongqing City where he enjoyed a childhood of playing ping pong, basketball and volleyball (“I am a sportsman, actually”), Dr Long was an exemplary student at his high school and at university. Having studied Public Health for six years and then going on to obtain a Masters in Nutrition, Dr Long became a lecturer of Nutrition and Food Hygiene for 7 years. It was during this time as a lecturer that Dr Long met his future wife of 16 years, Bing Tang.
Dr Long became very well known in the field of nutrition and received a scholarship to study in the United Kingdom – a life altering experience that Dr Long says changed him from a “scientist to humanist”. His main focus at the time was to undertake research related to human and animal micronutrient deficiency. But Dr Long couldn’t see how such research would immediately benefit the people that lived around him. “I became so frustrated at spending so much time with small animals and undertaking research – it seemed as if the end goal was just to publish a paper – I wanted to dedicate myself to working on something that would directly benefit the health of my people.”
This shift in focus took Dr Long to the University of Queensland where he completed his PhD in Public Health and then to Shanghai to work for ORBIS International, another blindness prevention organisation.
Dr Long became The Fred Hollows Foundation’s Country Manger for China in 2006. “Even before I joined The Foundation, I had heard about the good work that The Foundation was doing in developing countries, as well as here in Jiangxi Province, but I didn’t know much about Fred Hollows himself – only that he was very famous in Australia, had a strong personality and strived to restore sight to those who were needlessly blind”. Despite not knowing much about Fred Hollows, Dr Long understands the thrill that Fred felt when he helped a person see again “When I witness a patient seeing again, I am so touched by their smile, it really encourages me to do more, to expand our program so that more people in China can have access to sight restoring surgery.”
Dr Long is based in Jiangxi Province’s capital city, Nanchang. His wife and daughter live in Brisbane, Australia, which he visits twice a year.