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Optometry Giving Sight funds eye care nurse program in East Timor
Some people in Southeast Asia’s East Timor walk up to 4 hours over mountains to get an eye exam through an Optometry Giving Sight-sponsored eye care nurse program.
Alito has been working as an eye care nurse in East Timor for 6 years. He said East Timor’s people, primarily uneducated and residing in rural areas, live in blindness because they do not know where to go for help.
East Timor has only about 10 eye care professionals, Alito said, and some districts have none. “In my district there are 90,000 people and only myself,” he said.
Alito and his colleague Bernadino visited Australia in May to continue their training and receive additional mentoring from local optometrists. They spent time in optometry practices in Melbourne and Hobart and the Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne and attended the Southern Regional Congress.
Their visit to Australia was organized by Micheal Knipe, director and deputy chairman of the Optometrist Association Australia, national committee member of Optometry Giving Sight in Australia and volunteer project manager of the East Timor Eye Program, and Provision Optometry Teams and was designed to enhance their clinical skills and assist with their professional development.
Mr. Knipe said, “We are very grateful to Alito and the other eye care nurses that we work with in East Timor. Their commitment to help give sight to their neighbors has been instrumental in the progress that has been made in developing sustainable vision care for a country so devastated by civil war and unrest.”
Mr. Knipe has visited East Timor five times since 2003 and in the beginning most of his time, and that of his fellow volunteers, was spent examining patients. More recently, however, while still providing basic eye care, the volunteers are extensively involved in supporting the establishment of an East Timorese eye care system staffed and run by local people, such as Alito.
Learn more about Optometry Giving Sight by visiting www.givingsight.org or calling (888) OGS-GIVE.
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