When my sister moved to Gabon to take up a Residency as Director of Medical Research at CIRMF (Centre International pour la Recherche Médicale de Franceville), I always thought how odd it was to be getting phone calls from the rain forest on the equator. Vic is further away!
It is good to know tht the flight is behind her. I am sure she will settle quickly and grow into the work.
Andrew
Off to Madagascar!
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Andrew MacLean
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Louise Pembroke
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- Keratoconus: Yes, I have KC
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Andrew MacLean
- Moderator
- Posts: 7703
- Joined: Thu 15 Jan 2004 8:01 pm
- Keratoconus: Yes, I have KC
- Vision: Other
- Location: Scotland
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Louise Pembroke
- Champion
- Posts: 1482
- Joined: Sat 21 Aug 2004 11:34 pm
- Keratoconus: Yes, I have KC
- Vision: Graft(s) and contact lenses
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Andrew MacLean
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Vic
- Regular contributor
- Posts: 137
- Joined: Sat 01 Apr 2006 8:19 pm
- Keratoconus: Yes, I have KC
- Vision: Graft(s) and spectacles
- Location: Birmingham
And I'm back again 
Thank you all for your good wishes whilst I was away. I had the most incredible time, Madagascar is an amazing place. The village where I was working was very rural and provision very basic but I was shown wonderful hospitality by the people there and it was a very humbling experience to able to be a part of the life and the hospital work there.
I also got to talk to one of the only optometrists in the whole of the country about keratoconus in Madagascar - apparently it is very much present over there but they currently have no provision at all to fit patients with lenses (it is still somewhat of an uphill struggle to be able to correct more 'straightforward' refractive errors and dispense simple glasses) and there is no corneal grafting done. They looked at my graft under a slit lamp, and it was the first time that any of the Malagasy ophthalmologists / optometrists that I met had ever seen a graft. However they're very enthusiastic about wanting to try and start fitting KC patients with lenses, so in a few years' time, who knows, hopefully...
It is one of those moments in life when you sit back and truly appreciate just how fortunate we are to have the eyecare provision that we do in the UK!
Thank you all for your good wishes whilst I was away. I had the most incredible time, Madagascar is an amazing place. The village where I was working was very rural and provision very basic but I was shown wonderful hospitality by the people there and it was a very humbling experience to able to be a part of the life and the hospital work there.
I also got to talk to one of the only optometrists in the whole of the country about keratoconus in Madagascar - apparently it is very much present over there but they currently have no provision at all to fit patients with lenses (it is still somewhat of an uphill struggle to be able to correct more 'straightforward' refractive errors and dispense simple glasses) and there is no corneal grafting done. They looked at my graft under a slit lamp, and it was the first time that any of the Malagasy ophthalmologists / optometrists that I met had ever seen a graft. However they're very enthusiastic about wanting to try and start fitting KC patients with lenses, so in a few years' time, who knows, hopefully...
It is one of those moments in life when you sit back and truly appreciate just how fortunate we are to have the eyecare provision that we do in the UK!
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Andrew MacLean
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- Keratoconus: Yes, I have KC
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