Our Eye Care Program is dedicated to alleviating the people of Sumba from eye diseases and assisting their refraction needs.
Since we started this project, we have screened 12,153 patients, dispensed 10,574 pairs of eyeglasses, and performed 1,186 eye operations.
The Australian and Indonesian medical teams now come for one week twice a year, once in May to screen patients and educate the eye care nurses, and again in August to perform more eye screenings and any needed eye operations.
The eye care nurses perform eye screenings and distribute prescription glasses at our clinics throughout the year, and they follow up with patients after the surgery sessions.
Our nurses Sany and Nefry took a two-week training course in Sydney, Australia, where they spent time with the Eye Care Program doctors and learned more in-depth knowledge about eye care and eye diseases. We’ve already seen them applying so much of this learning to the Sumbanese people’s eye care.
The eye operations are done annually as a collaboration between the Sumba Foundation, the Australian/Asian College of Surgeons, and the University of Hasanuddin in Makassar, Indonesia.
