A day in the life of Goretti Zinkeng
Goretti is an ophthalmic nurse, based in Limbe, Cameroon.
42 year old Goretti spent three years training to be a registered nurse (there is only one nurse per 100,000 people in Cameroon), before Sightsavers supported her to train in Ghana as an ophthalmic nurse. In fact, she is the only ophthalmic nurse in the district of Limbe.
A typical day for Goretti starts at 5am, when she gets up, gets dressed, has breakfast. She has Catholic mass around 6am, and between 7:30 and 8am she catches up with admin and balancing the finances from the previous day’s activities. Between 8am and 2.30pm she is usually busy with consultations, dispensing spectacles, issuing Mectizan® to treat river blindness, and referring people to the ophthalmologist for surgery.
Other days she may be out in the communities visiting people who have had surgery, or at schools screening for eye problems. Goretti is responsible for spreading messages about eye care services to the public, through local community groups and church services. She often wears a t-shirt with the words ‘TAKE MECTIZAN®’ emblazoned on it, which has proved to be a very effective way of raising awareness, and has another t-shirt that has a picture of an eye testing chart on it.
In order to do any of her work, Goretti must first ask permission in the form of a letter to the Department of Health. Once this is approved she must refer to the chief of the community, who will give her the dates for the various activities she has requested to do. There’s a lot of paper work involved in her job!
She enjoys her work very much, and says it is: “my way of serving God”.
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What do you think?
Ozi, United Kingdom (Jan 2012)
Again I commend the efforts. I strongly recommend the use of health assistant/community health workers/ volunteers- people trusted in the community. This should improve uptake of services once there is increased education and awareness as well as finance through user fees to sustain eye care services.