Lumen Winter 2013 - Flipbook - Page 17
T
he South Australian ophthalmologist
and founder of Sight For All has
been recognised for his outstanding
work with an Order of Australia (AM) and
Rural Doctors Workforce Agency Rural
Community Health and Wellbeing Award.
James is passionately committed to
blindness prevention in Asia and the
Aboriginal communities of Australia,
and the vital role he plays in training
Third World doctors is producing
remarkable results.
“Eighty per cent of blindness in the
world is avoidable – so it’s entirely
treatable or preventable,” says James.
James and the Sight For All team are
bringing eye care to areas most in need,
with their main focus on the Asia-Pacific
region where nearly half the world’s blind
population resides. Through the provision
of research, education, health promotion
and infrastructure support, Sight For
All has made significant steps towards
eliminating avoidable blindness.
“We carried out a childhood blindness
survey in Myanmar (formerly Burma) and
discovered that half the kids who are blind
in that country were needlessly blind with
diseases that could have been treated or
prevented,” James says.
“That gave us the incentive to bring
over a young eye surgeon from Myanmar
and train him for a year at the Adelaide
Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
“He went back as the first paediatric
eye surgeon in his country of 60 million
people. We then set him up in the first
paediatric eye unit with all the appropriate
diagnostic equipment and surgical
instruments.
“He’s been back for two years now, and
we’ve recently heard that there’s been a
15-fold increase in children’s eye surgery
performed in the country as a direct
result of his work.”
This is just one example that strongly
demonstrates the powerful impact
and sustainability factor of Sight For
All’s approach – the eye surgeons
trained in Adelaide are able to return
to their own country to treat patients
and then pass skills and knowledge on
to their colleagues.
Another graduate of Sight For All’s
fellowship program has just become
Bhutan’s first glaucoma specialist in her
country, returning home after 12 months
of intensive training in three centres by
some of the leading glaucoma specialists
in the world.
And in Vietnam, Sight For All has just
finished its first ‘reverse fellowship’ where
Australian and New Zealand paediatric
eye surgeons have travelled there to
conduct the training ‘in-country’.
As a specialist in the childhood eye
cancer, retinoblastoma, James and his
team recently spent time looking at how
this disease was handled in the leading
eye centre in Hanoi and what they
found was disturbing.
“I was absolutely sideswiped,”
says James.
“A third of the kids were going to die
because of mismanagement; a third
of the kids were blind as a result of
mismanagement; and a third of the kids
were just plain lucky to have got through
without dying or going blind. This is quite
simply due to the fact that there is nobody
in the country trained to manage this
complex disease.
“To see that was heartbreaking.”
Within that week James says they were
able to completely change the approach
to retinoblastoma through some very
simple techniques that he taught
the doctors.
Sight For All is soon to start training
Laos’ first paediatric ophthalmologist and
future reverse fellowships are planned for
Cambodia, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
And while the main focus is on Asia,
avoidable eye disease is still a major
problem in the Indigenous population of
our own country.
James has been heavily involved in
campaigns to raise awareness about eye
health in Aboriginal communities, where
diabetes is the fastest growing cause
of vision loss.
Using novel approaches such as a
music clip featuring an Aboriginal rapper,
an animated video which can be dubbed
over with different Indigenous languages
and a short film that takes away some of
the mystery surrounding the eye treatment
process, Sight For All is raising awareness
in these communities and hopes to
increase the capture rate of patients who
require surveillance or surgery.
Passionately committed to making a
difference, James finds it hard to pinpoint
where his humanitarian spirit came from.
“I always wanted to be a doctor from
my earliest memories, and I can’t exactly
say why – it’s something innate, I loved
the idea of being able to help people,”
he says.
And although memories of his student
days revolve mainly around the significant
demands of medical school, the terror of
exams and sleepless nights, he recalls
a lot of fun times and is grateful to the
University for his medical school training
and experiences as a student here.
“It has been without doubt the biggest
impact on my life.
“It was because of the University
nurturing and educating me to a high
level that I was able to build my career
and as a result, to help people, not only
patients but colleagues and people all
over the world.”
Eighty per cent of
blindness in the world is
avoidable – so it’s entirely
treatable or preventable.
Above and left, Dr James
Muecke AM in Vietnam.
Photos by Sarah Martin,
The Australian.
The University of Adelaide | Alumni Magazine 15
