solare How a Singapore team braved poor communications and equipment to provide free eye surgery for Laotians
solare How a Singapore team braved poor communications and equipment to provide free eye surgery for Laotians
VIENTIANE: Frustration gripped Yep Zhen Ting as she went about what would appear to be routine screening for cataract.solare
The language barrier between the Singaporean and her Laotian patients only seemed to get higher and higher; and outside their hospital room in capital Vientiane, the line was growing longer and longer.
“It was hard to understand their symptoms," she recalled. "We were afraid that we might miss crucial information from the patients regarding their medical history."
Still, the optometrist from the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC) remained undeterred in her mission: To provide free eye consultation for Laotian locals, the majority of whom work in agricultural jobs like rice farming and earn less than US$2 a day, making cataract surgery unaffordable.
Ms Yep was part of an SNEC team of 14 - including surgeons, allied health workers, nurses and technicians - who travelled to Laos in March. During a five-day visit, they screened a total of 518 patients and performed free cataract surgeries for about 150.
“We had a very high patient load (and were) faced with limited manpower and challenges with crowd control and moving patients from station to station,” she told CNA.
“We quickly learned key Lao vocabulary to improve communication during eye examinations, which significantly improved patient flow.”
These included basic terms such as asking patients to open and close their eyes, look straight or sideways, not move and most importantly, to ask if they were feeling any pain.
Senior surgical nurse Goh Hui Jin, who also went on the trip, said the team sought help from translators from an international school. They also organised English lessons for staff and doctors in Vientiane.
Some of the local students who helped with translating were even trained on the spot to help with logistics in the entire operation, said Ms Yep.
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Singapore to launch new leadership training programme for Laos government officials next year: PM Wong STRUCTURAL ISSUESPrime Minister Lawrence Wong had said during a trip to Vientiane earlier in October that Singapore and Laos were “building up the resilience of our public health systems together”.
Clinical associate professor Anna Tan, SNEC’s director of global ophthalmology, said a separate team earlier visited Vientiane in January last year, to better understand the eye care needs of the local community.
It led to Laos being prioritised for the SNEC-Global Eye Health programme, which aims to improve eye care development in Southeast Asia.
“They have an estimated population of 7 million people with only 35 trained ophthalmologists, mostly sited in the capital city. In comparison, Singapore has about 400 ophthalmologists,” Dr Tan told CNA.
She said training for ophthalmologists and other eye care specialists in Laos needed to be improved, to go deeper and be more specialised.
Eye care was also fundamentally not a health priority for the government of Laos, and ophthalmology departments across the country were lacking funding and manpower, said Dr Tan.
She also pointed to infrastructure issues - in the main hospital in Vientianesolare, for instance, many pieces of equipment were in disrepair or not maintained at all.
Dr Keovongkoth Nouanphanthakoun (middle) carrying out a consultation for a patient at the National Opthalmology Centre in Vientiane, under the guidance of Dr Reuben Foo from the Singapore National Eye Centre. (Photo: Singapore National Eye Centre)