Kai DeBus
Patients are asked to cover their eyes before surgery. This helps dilate the pupil, which allows operations like cataract surgery to be conducted more efficiently.
and listen to that? The important thing is getting adequate resources to embark on extensive educational, preventive and curative ophthalmic outreach campaigns, just as we are doing, and replicate that in all regions of Ghana. In 2010, we had a World Glaucoma Summit in Accra here in Ghana where we invited the [Ghanaian] politicians. What they heard and learned shocked them, and they promised to help the Ghana Health Service acquire a slit lamp, a visual field analyzer, and an operating microscope for each Regional Hospital. After a long push, the equipment was eventually procured for all the ten Regional Hospitals. There are a lot of barriers to uptake for eye care services and I think we as ophthalmic professionals have to work hard, do a good job with good surgical outcomes, and break all these barriers to make people have trust in the work we do. Do you have any advice for those who wish to pursue medicine or public health in a developing country?
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There are always differences in healthcare systems in individual countries, so I think it’s good to get an idea of how the healthcare system works in any country where anyone is planning to pursue medicine or public health work. I think it’s also important to listen to the needs of the people in that country who are the direct beneficiaries of your services. Don’t think you can go and impose things just because you have better experience or more money. While practicing there, we need to understand the behavior of the people we serve, help them identify their health problems, and facilitate the process of them finding solutions to their own problems. These can be achieved through extensive engagement with the communities, education, and advocacy. If you have an idea, let them discuss it and allow them to come up with a solution. We also have to bear in mind that people in the US and other Western countries have a greater sense of responsibility and are more conscientious of the re-
spect that they’ll get. They want to do the right thing because if they don’t, they’ll be questioned and be held accountable. In most developing countries it is something different and we have to live by example, and I think that will draw more people toward us and will open avenues for us to effect change in the communities we serve.
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Kai DeBus is a junior in Saybrook College majoring in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. Contact him at kai.debus@yale.edu.
YALE GLOBAL HEALTH REVIEW