“It is a great pleasure for me to inform you that I successfully completed my
one month SICS training at Aravind Eye Hospital in Pondicherry on December 31st, 2008. I
would like to thank Right to Sight for funding my training. I appreciate very
much the collaboration between RTS and my project and I wish that this collaboration will continue.”
Dr. Alice.
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Dr. Alice is now training her colleagues in SICS technique and is also involved
in the training of the paramedical staff at the hospital. The hospital is also
fortunate that it has a manager trained at Aravind who understands the importance of management systems.
Ambohibao Hospital is situated in the capital of Madagascar Antananarivo. Madagascar
is the largest island off Africa’s east coast in the Indian Ocean and has a population of
around 20million people.
The Malagasy Lutheran Church runs the Ambohibao Hospital. The eye department is
one of 4 eye departments in the city responsible for the provision of eye care to
Antananarivo and the surrounding area, which has a population of about 1.2 million (2,5 million
including the surrounding area). The estimated prevalence of blindness is 1%,
of which 50% is due to cataract. Glaucoma and corneal scar are the other
leading causes of blindness. The eye department comprises of an outpatient clinic,
a 10 bed ward and an operating room. There is also cataract case finding in the city.
There are 3 ophthalmologists running the eye clinic and operating at the hospital.
The hospital is also supported by CBM and the Lions, whereas initially rooms at the
hospital were renovated to accommodate the eye unit, later on in 2006 CBM constructed an
inpatient ward with 10 beds. Currently the eye unit has a dedicated OPD, IPD and OR.
The hospital is open six days a week with 3 surgical days. There is an outreach
programme in place and the team typically comprises of an ophthalmologist, two paramedical
staff and one non clinical person for administration. In addition, the hospital
has also trained one person as a cataract case finder.
The hospital currently has a five year Strategic Plan for Eye Care in place (2008-2012). The
overall objective of the eye unit is: To eliminate needless blindness due to cataract in the
Ananlamanga Region by the year 2012. To this end the plan is to increase the CSR
from 1412 to 2000, to train 3 more ophthalmologists in Small Incision Cataract Surgery
(SICS technique) to increase their efficiency and to decrease the cataract surgery cost
from 250$ to 125$.
Right to Sight looks forward to working more closely with Dr. Alice and her team at
Ambohibao going forward to realise these changes and arrive at their goals.
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