BLOG: Building eye care capacity in Haiti, part two
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Ultra-low resource settings require the approach described in part one of this blog because teaching a person to fish is not enough if there are no fish in the pond.
We found it important to know each and every resident and engage them at the beginning of their training. Now we are also helping graduated residents bridge the gap to private practice, especially if they are going to the more underserved areas outside of Port-au-Prince.
The residency training program now has a fairly well-equipped and supplied clinic, a curriculum with a full French-based lecture series, high-speed internet, a two-station wet lab with Zeiss microscopes, slit lamps, B-scan, A-scan, OCT, fundus camera, 532 nm laser, YAG laser, two video-adapted Zeiss microscopes and much more.
FOCUS employs two country coordinators who work full time at the residency program and help with day-to-day operations of the clinic. They are responsible for repairs, supplies, record keeping, clinical support for OCT scans and IT support.
Ana Bastos Carvalho, MD, a FOCUS board member, has put together the remote lecture series for the complete curriculum, which was modified somewhat for Haiti. She also serves as co-director of the residency program and is in regular contact with residents, who are evaluated on a regular basis.
One difficult problem in Haiti is the lack of full-time attending physicians at the residency program, which is the same in every department due to severe lack of funding. Another problem has been that residents graduate without being fully trained. To address this problem and the lack of subspecialty training, FOCUS decided to start funding postgraduate specialty fellowships at HUEH. We now have two pediatric fellows, a retina/ROP fellow, a glaucoma fellow and a cornea fellow. We hope to add oculoplastics soon and to be able to continue to offer these fellowships if we can maintain the funding from our donors.
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