I Care About Eye Care, Says Frank
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday August 9, 1991
In Bangladesh, Professor Frank Billson wishes he could walk on water.
The locals say that he can but the Professor of Ophthalmology at Sydney Eye Hospital, the specialist teaching hospital of Sydney University and the major centre for eye surgery and training in NSW, pushes that praise aside.
Since 1978, Professor Billson has led teams of Australian eye doctors to Bangladesh 20 times to share in the training of local doctors and paramedics to perform cataract surgery and prevent blindness.
Last year alone sight was restored to 65,000 people blinded by cataracts by local doctors trained by the Australian team.
He is leaving today for Bangladesh to see for the first time the devastation caused by this year's floods and to help the families of those who work in nine eye hospitals rebuild their homes.
"Each year, 35,000 children under the age of five are going blind but millions more have their sight impaired by malnutrition," Professor Billson said.
"The eye is the sort of mirror of society and the diseases that it gets mirror the socio-economic circumstances of the health services of that country.
"Sight can be restored within 10 or 15 minutes in a developing country with a simple technique."
Teaching intra-ocular lens implantation, a technique introduced to Eritrea by Professor Fred Hollows, is occurring as the conditions and money allow.
The Bangladesh National Society for the Blind, Chittagong Eye Infirmary and Training Complex is the centre of a network of nine hospitals treating blindness.
It serves 13million people in a radius of less than 160kilometres.
"We work in a sense to be unnecessary, to be redundant. It's their country," Professor Billson said.
On this visit he will finalise plans for a Chair of Community Ophthalmology at the Chittagong hospital.
Professor Billson is one of the founding members of Foresight Sightsavers Australia, an international non-government agency for the prevention of blindness, and its work in Bangladesh prompted the establishment of the Save Sight and Eye Health Institute in 1985 in Sydney.
It has also changed Professor Billson's approach to eye care.
"The influence of working in Bangladesh has affected the way I see the services of the Eye Hospital," he said.
"I have a vision of the way eye health services should develop in this State and the most important thing is to recognise that the old idea of doctors sitting in their rooms waiting for patients is wrong."
Australia still has an unacceptable rate of sight loss because people do not recognise the early warning signs.
"I believe in Australia the teaching institutions and centres of excellence must increasingly relate to the community," he said.
"What is needed is an informed community empowered with information to care for their eyes and take the steps that would prevent needless loss of sight."
Donations for the work in Bangladesh can be made to Foresight Sightsavers Australia, P.O. Box 493, Darlinghurst, 2010.
© 1991 Sydney Morning Herald