Country Staff

Dr Mary Hlalele's mother was a nutritionist who devised and delivered a nutrition program for the small land locked country of Lesotho. As a little girl, Dr Hlalele's happiest memories were of tagging along with her mother to villages and towns around Lesotho, sitting in on community nutrition training sessions whenever she could. Being the only child at these training sessions, Dr Hlalele was often the centre of attention; but the experience was special to Dr Hlalele because she was able to spend time with her working mother. Moreover, being exposed to disadvantaged people and communities was also an eye opener for Mary "Seeing what life was really like for some people and noticing how some things don't happen, that should happen, really instilled a strong humanitarian impulse in me".

From these early experiences, Dr Hlalele developed an interest in and commitment to community based health care development programs in which health professionals and community members work together to improve the health and well-being of citizens. Subsequently, Dr Hlalele became a primary health care physician, working largely in the area of maternal and child health across Africa.

Dr Hlalele was appointed the position of General Manager for The Fred Hollows Foundation South Africa in June 2007. "Before joining The Fred Hollows Foundation South Africa, I never really thought of eye care as a high priority for the primary health activities that I was previously involved in" says Dr Hlalele. "But I now realize that the effort placed on other health interventions and programs will have no value if a person does not have their sight. If we can't see, we can't do a lot of things - The Fred Hollows Foundation has helped me realise just how important the eye is".

After a period of working with The Foundation, Dr Hlalele began to understand the wider impact of blindness on family members and society at large. "Sometimes, children or carers may not themselves be blind, but they have to take care of their blind parent or relative, meaning they miss out on playing with other children, attending school or working to contribute to society." Dr Hlalele remembers meeting two children who had been taking care of their blind grandmother. "The two young children were waiting outside an operating theatre, watching the cataract operation of their grandmother on video. As it was happening their eyes just got wider and wider because they were very worried. They saw their grandmother's eye being probed with instruments and asked all kinds of questions. But as the operation came to an end, they were relieved and excited to be reconnected with their grandmother". Within a few minutes, the children's lives were turned around as they were no longer bound to their grandmother, helping her to move around and to do basic tasks.

As General Manager of The Fred Hollows Foundation South Africa, Dr Hlalele's role is to provide leadership in implementing The Foundation's goal of developing local capacity for preventing and treating avoidable blindness in Southern Africa with special focus on rural communities. She will also establish collaborations with the government and partners to ensure this goal is met.

One of the fundamental concerns of The Fred Hollows Foundation South Africa is the uneven distribution of health professionals between cities and rural areas. "Across the country we hear of the unacceptably long queues for eye operations in urban hospitals due to the critical shortage of doctors and nurses in rural areas" says Dr Hlalele. The Foundation works with partners to build the capacity of hospitals that service rural areas in South Africa's Eastern Cape Province, which has the worst cataract surgical rate in South Africa . To build the capacity of hospitals, such as Frontier Hospital in Queenstown, cataract surgeons and nurses have been trained. Surgical space and equipment has been secured so that hospitals have the ability to treat many of the 30,000 people who are blinded by cataracts in Eastern Cape Province. "I think it is critical for The Fred Hollows Foundation to not just enter a community and do an eye camp and leave, but to do a service that has lasting impact and a level of sustainability" says Dr Hlalele.

When asked about her challenges as General Manager of The Fred Hollows Foundation South Africa, Dr Hlalele cites getting courses that are currently not accredited by the Health Professionals Council of South Africa, to be approved for accreditation - which is a long but necessary process. These courses will train medical practitioners to perform cataract surgery so that not just ophthalmologists can perform sight restoring surgery. Some courses will also aim to train people who are not health professionals to become ophthalmic assistants. "These courses, which will take from six months to a year to complete, are about training people in specific skills quickly to address the cataract backlog head on" says Dr Hlalele. "If you don't put in place human resources that could take care of the problem, many will remain blind".

Another project that Dr Hlalele is working on is the completion of the Sabona Centre, a dedicated eye care centre located at Frontier Hospital. A joint project between The Fred Hollows Foundation South Africa and the Eastern Cape Department of Health, the Sabona Centre will be a place where patients will be treated and looked after by personnel who will also be trained at the Centre. The Sabona Centre project will be completed in 2008.

In her spare time, Dr Hlalele's enjoys going to the gym, doing aerobics and going to live theatre. She resides in Johannesburg, South Africa.