Volunteering in Guyana
Volunteer optometrist Angela Reading is on a two year placement in Guyana, strengthening eye care services in Sightsavers supported projects there.
It’s not every day that optometrists arrive at work by dugout canoe. However, during my recent outreach trip in rural Guyana this was the preferred method of transport.
I arrived here in April 2008. I work at the public hospitals in Georgetown and in the regions, with my colleague Petra van Es, a Dutch optometrist.
Guyana is a developing country in South America. The climate is tropical, and most of the country is covered in rainforest. Although Guyana is relatively small, there are many very inaccessible areas: many villages can only be reached by boat or plane. Although the roads are good around the city, they don’t extend to rural areas.
A lack of eye care services
There are only five qualified optometrists in the whole country. Remote regions, which may be more than a day’s travel from the capital, don’t have any eye care services. We are working with Sightsavers’ partner Eye Care Guyana to supply these regions with ‘refractionists’ who, while not at optometrist level, are able to provide affordable spectacles and diagnose eye diseases.
Most of my time is spent training refractionists, who are local Guyanese people. They work in the public hospitals. One of the first things which concerned me when I arrived here was the huge amount of unnecessary blindness due to glaucoma. Glaucoma is especially prevalent in Afro-Guyanese people. Soon after my arrival I taught a glaucoma detection module for all the refractionists to increase their knowledge in this area.
In April four of us spent a week in and around Mabaruma, a remote area in the north west of Guyana. This outreach trip was a great success. We saw 390 patients, gave out at least 300 spectacles and discovered over 20 new glaucoma cases. The two refractionists who were with us were very hard-working and both kept saying how much they were enjoying the experience.
Travelling by water
We took a trip to a village out of Mabaruma using dugout canoes to travel along a beautiful creek. The refractionists had never been to this area of countryside, even though they live in Guyana. Our guides were two local young men from the village, which is the most poverty stricken in the area. Some residents have malnutrition and life expectancy is low. When I gave our guides the equivalent of three UK pounds they seemed really pleased and were seen later carrying a huge bag of rice from the shop five miles away!
Of the 20 people who had their eyes examined at this village only one could read the letters on the vision card, as they are illiterate. The children do not go to school since it is a three hour walk to the nearest one!
I was also able to spend ten days in the deep forest and savannah of south Guyana….
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