Activities

A National Eye Care Workshop was held in September 2006 attended by nurses, doctors, health department and hospital representatives.  A Primary Eye Care refresher course for 14 nurses from throughout PNG was held in Port Moresby in August 2006, delivered and funded by The Foundation.

In 2005 two nurses, Priscilla Drikora and Anita Johns, attended a one year vision technician course at the LV Prasad Institute in India.  This course gave them high quality skills in 'refraction' (vision testing) and basic diagnostic techniques for eye care.

The nurses returned to the Port Moresby Eye Clinic at Port Moresby General Hospital, equipped with new skills and knowledge and also basic eye care equipment to provide vision testing and refraction services. 

Priscilla has recently returned to Madang where she is helping to manage a vision centre which sells spectacles on a cost-recovery basis.

From December 2004 to March 2005, The Fred Hollows Foundation-PNG Eye Care Program conducted a blindness survey in conjunction with The Fred Hollows Foundation NZ and LV Prasad Institute in India.  Using volunteers from the St Johns Association for the Blind, the team chose village clusters around Port Moresby and the Central Province to conduct both quantitative and qualitative research about blindness prevalence and barriers to eye care. 

The program has also supported the revamp of postgraduate ophthalmology training courses with the University of PNG, which are currently the only university-based ophthalmology courses in the Pacific region.

Once sufficient numbers of eye doctors and nurses are trained in PNG, the program will work with these health professionals to develop clinics in remote regions of PNG.