New eye clinic in Joza

From Page 3

Patients with cataracts are put on a list at the St John’s clinic and every two or three months, a team of opthalmologists from Port Elizabeth spends a week in Grahamstown, undertaking around 40 cataract operations.

“We are hoping to implement the same attitude and inter-professional care towards diabetic retinopathy management,” Oosthuizen said.

“The aim of the programme is to identify patients who would not otherwise have access to health- and eye care.” Vision, or its absence, directly affects the quality and length of healthy ageing, Oosthuizen said.

“Because many patients with sight-threatening disease do not present with symptoms, continuous and reliable evaluations is a valuable strategy in decreasing the burden on the population and the medical care systems.”

Sister Thozama Nakase, who is in charge of eye screening at Settlers Hospital Outpatients Department, said the programme would be extremely helpful.

“We do 10-15 eye screenings a day, and because we don’t have specialised equipment, we often have to refer even simple cases to Port Elizabeth. Now if someone comes with a problem that is out of our screening ambit, we can refer them here.”

Oosthuizen said the diabetic screening was also capable of picking up a range of other problems.

“What is particular about diabetic screening is that it needs a lot of follow-up visits.”

Saying that the Port Elizabeth optometrists perform the highest number of cataract operation in South Africa, Manager at St John Ambulance Mario Viljoen said that for every 250 patients diagnosed with cataracts, 305 were referred for other problems.

“This clinic should help streamline that process,” Viljoen said. Jan-Louis Fourie, of The Eye Store, said the cataract clinic operated extremely efficiently and the diabetic retinopathy screening and referral process would be structured in the same way.

“The key to diabetes is catching it as early as possible,” Fourie said.

He said the clinic would help make referrals as specific as possible. Gaybba spoke of the importance of building public-private partnerships to provide services and facilities.

“Businesses traditionally have a donor relationship with organisations,” Gaybba said. “But to give time, effort andCare is much more difficult.

“We need to build monuments of love and care,” Gaybba said.