Georgetown : The Low Vision Unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC) could be a source of immense finances to help improve the current operation of the Ophthalmology Department. However, according to Head of the Department, Dr George Norton, this is currently not the case.
Government had introduced the Low Vision Unit with a view of making eye care more accessible and affordable when compared to what obtains at private health facilities. As such the facility has been providing, among other services, low cost spectacles to citizens in need of eye care unlike the private entities that are known to provide both high-cost and low cost frames. “If you come and set up something (service) at the GPHC everybody would get the impression that this is being offered by the Government and there is the tendency for people to flock that service.” Given the number of persons who seek after the Low Vision service and the lack of improvements that have been realised, Dr Norton is convinced that there is a dire need for more accountability at the GPHC.
This is even in light of the fact that persons who have been trained as refractionists have been tasked with examining the eyes of persons throughout the length and breadth of Guyana with the objective of referring them to the Low Vision Unit.
“It is a lucrative business they have gotten into….but does the eye clinic benefit? No it does not!…We still have a situation where we don’t have the right needles, we don’t have the right instruments and so many things we need we are just not getting them and I think we need to get that situation addressed.” The Eye Department, according to the Ophthalmologist, is currently furnished with old antiquated, condemned and rusted equipment that “we are using every day and as far as I am concerned low vision is reaping a large sum of money and I would think we would have benefited more.”
According to Dr Norton he has been asking the hospital’s administration week after week in an attempt to secure consumables for the eye department but “we are not getting it…a needle to do retro-bulb injections and the right type of solutions we are just not getting so I am not happy about the whole situation at all.”
Commenting on the role of the refractionists, Dr Norton revealed that they were subjected to a mere six-month training programme which was facilitated by foreigners. “They have formed themselves into an entity and they have brought foreigners here to come and train the Guyanese to do the eye test and they train persons from all the different areas just to do the test.” These trained refractionists, according to the Ophthalmologist, are tasked with practically setting up clinics at health centres. “What is happening, for instance in some areas is that we have a doctor who is there to attend to somebody and instead of examining that person’s eye the doctor sends that person to that refractionist who has had six months of training…”
When you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail; they (refractionists) can only test eyes, that is all they are trained to do when the doctor should have examined the patient and prescribe treatment instead they are sending them over to people who are not even technicians,” Dr Norton lamented.
