Vision for the future
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Dr James Brandt, an ophthalmology professor of surgery from the University of California-Davis, conducts a glaucoma screening clinic in Jinan. Physicians from Shandong Red Cross Eye Hospital observe and participate. [Photo by Geoff Oliver Bugbee / China Daily] |
As a youngster, Gomaa dreamed of flying long before he aspired to be a doctor. The high-tech plane, he says, is only half the story of this late-April mission in Jinan. The visiting specialists teach and operate both on the plane and at the Shandong Red Cross Eye Hospital nearby. The three-year $1.5 million project also includes the Lunan Eye Hospital in nearby Linyi.
"All of that," says Gomaa, "builds the community's capacity to deal with avoidable blindness."
Gomaa concedes that it's tough to choose which patients will get surgery each week.
"Since we are here first to teach," he says, "about 17 of the 25 cases we take on the plane must offer basic, practical knowledge for the attending local doctors and nurses."
"Most of the academic conferences are only about sharing high-tech," says Chen Lizhong of the Shandong Red Cross Hospital. "There are very few opportunities for this kind of hands-on training. It has been also a role model for senior doctors to learn how to train junior doctors."
Brandt notes that pediatric surgery is the most complex: "The anesthesia demands more attention, and because the eye tissue is still growing, you have to project future development. There is also more risk of complications and rejection."
But detecting eye trouble early can be a ticket to a normal life for tens of thousands in China. Undetected, glaucoma and other eye diseases can be well-established by the age of 5, when the eye has usually reached its mature size. Blindness can be total before a child is 10.
"The major symptom is large eyes," says Brandt's colleague Dr Rory T. Allar. "If only one eye is affected, the problem is pretty obvious. But if both eyes are affected, what you have is a beautiful baby with big eyes—a sight that always brings smiles to parents and even doctors. That often means the disease isn't detected until later.
"Our job is to give the local doctors the skills to act before it's too late."
Related: Surgery in close up
