by Ot Mean Loi » Wed May 15, 2019 3:26 pm
My primary involvement in Cambodia for many years now has been in the area of preventable blindness and restoration of sight and in particular with the Battambang Ophthalmic Care - BOC - organization.
The BOC is a very little known Cambodian local NGO that, currently, operates in north-western Cambodia and is based in Battambang with its surgical HQ opposite Wat/Pagoda PIPITTHEAM in Street # 2, and only a two minute walk from the main market, Psar Nat: and which quietly and effectively provides one third of the total Cambodian total eye care services to Cambodian outpatients and ophthalmic surgical procedures for the whole of Cambodia to those in need who come, because of word of mouth recommendation, from all over Cambodia and not from just north-western Cambodia. Fee for service patients are also welcome and treated but the majority of patients receive free or very nearly so treatment. Patients able to make a modest contribution to their restoration or retention of sight must do so. Even if it is only the cost of their eye drops bought at very low prices thanks to global competitive tendering for BP/USP or EU accredited medications. We treat the poor rural needy not the greedy and a small co-payment, where applicable, stops the development of a Cargo Cult mentality. After all, it is very hard work raising funds internationally to support such total eye care programmes.
While Cambodia has some 32 fully qualified ophthalmologists, only 15 are working within the public health sector, serving a population now nudging 16 million people and their distribution is uneven throughout the country. A ratio of 1 Ophthalmologist to circa 1,000,000 plus population almost beggars belief to those from a developed country. Qualified ophthalmologists/eye surgeons also need to be supported in the operating theatre by qualified post graduate nurse specialists known in Cambodia as Diploma of Ophthalmic Nursing (DON) nurses of which the country has a shortage. It takes US$6500 and one year of full time training to train a basic graduate nurse as a DON.
Even worse is the lack of fully qualified optometrists in Cambodia. The majority of shops offering eye testing and spectacles are only staffed by "refractionists" or "optical dispensers" which are a far lesser medical training qualification and sub speciality than that of an optometrist and vastly underqualified compared to that of a graduate ophthalmologist. Worse still, many such premises use automated refractor machines which tend, on average, to prescribe overly powerful lenses rather that conducting a thorough visual acuity testing using a phoropter.
Compound or complex lenses simply can not be produced in Cambodia at the present time and such lenses, if correctly prescribed, need to be made in neighbouring countries such as Thailand and Singapore and to a lesser extent Vietnam.
Nystagmus is difficult to prescribe lenses for given the constant rotation or other movement of the eye. As such, my advice is to go to a regional country such as Singapore or Thailand for such specialist lenses. Preferably Singapore.
OML
My primary involvement in Cambodia for many years now has been in the area of preventable blindness and restoration of sight and in particular with the Battambang Ophthalmic Care - BOC - organization.
The BOC is a very little known Cambodian local NGO that, currently, operates in north-western Cambodia and is based in Battambang with its surgical HQ opposite Wat/Pagoda PIPITTHEAM in Street # 2, and only a two minute walk from the main market, Psar Nat: and which quietly and effectively provides one third of the total Cambodian total eye care services to Cambodian outpatients and ophthalmic surgical procedures for the whole of Cambodia to those in need who come, because of word of mouth recommendation, from all over Cambodia and not from just north-western Cambodia. Fee for service patients are also welcome and treated but the majority of patients receive free or very nearly so treatment. Patients able to make a modest contribution to their restoration or retention of sight must do so. Even if it is only the cost of their eye drops bought at very low prices thanks to global competitive tendering for BP/USP or EU accredited medications. We treat the poor rural needy not the greedy and a small co-payment, where applicable, stops the development of a Cargo Cult mentality. After all, it is very hard work raising funds internationally to support such total eye care programmes.
While Cambodia has some 32 fully qualified ophthalmologists, only 15 are working within the public health sector, serving a population now nudging 16 million people and their distribution is uneven throughout the country. A ratio of 1 Ophthalmologist to circa 1,000,000 plus population almost beggars belief to those from a developed country. Qualified ophthalmologists/eye surgeons also need to be supported in the operating theatre by qualified post graduate nurse specialists known in Cambodia as Diploma of Ophthalmic Nursing (DON) nurses of which the country has a shortage. It takes US$6500 and one year of full time training to train a basic graduate nurse as a DON.
Even worse is the lack of fully qualified optometrists in Cambodia. The majority of shops offering eye testing and spectacles are only staffed by "refractionists" or "optical dispensers" which are a far lesser medical training qualification and sub speciality than that of an optometrist and vastly underqualified compared to that of a graduate ophthalmologist. Worse still, many such premises use automated refractor machines which tend, on average, to prescribe overly powerful lenses rather that conducting a thorough visual acuity testing using a phoropter.
Compound or complex lenses simply can not be produced in Cambodia at the present time and such lenses, if correctly prescribed, need to be made in neighbouring countries such as Thailand and Singapore and to a lesser extent Vietnam.
Nystagmus is difficult to prescribe lenses for given the constant rotation or other movement of the eye. As such, my advice is to go to a regional country such as Singapore or Thailand for such specialist lenses. Preferably Singapore.
OML