Outreach optometry gives sight to the Top End 
Until recently, residents of many remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory's Top End were rarely seen by an optometrist.
But in April 2006, The Fred Hollows Foundation established the Outreach Optometry Trial.
"Few health care interventions are as cheap, effective, popular, safe and free of side effects as a pair of spectacles," says Tess Presswell, an optometrist who helped establish the trial.
"Access to spectacles should be a basic, universal human right, yet it is almost completely ignored in Aboriginal communities."
The purpose of the trial is to provide vital coordination and administrative support to optometrists when they visit remote Top End communities.
At present, nine optometrists are able to visit 35 communities on a regular basis.
Apart from providing primary eye care, the optometrists are essential in referring patients to ophthalmologists.
Cataract is widespread in Aboriginal communities, and often goes undiagnosed and untreated.
"The Fred Hollows Foundation have come to the party and provided funding and support to a worthwhile program to help deliver eye services to remote communities," says Ms Presswell.
For her, the highlights of her work include, "the stories that you hear from the old people, the beautiful babies you get to cuddle and the hospitality of the locals. Of course the look of pleasure on someone's face when they can see again is always a winner."
She also remembers an old lady she met in a community west of Katherine who had cataracts "as white as her hair".
It took a couple of visits to the community before Ms Presswell could convince her to go to Katherine for the simple operation that would restore her sight.
After the operation, she was so impressed she set about convincing others in the community of the benefits of surgery.
Ms Presswell points out that there is always a need for more optometrists to get involved in the scheme.
If you're an optometrist who'd like to get involved, phone The Fred Hollows Foundation's Northern Territory office on (08) 8941 5145.
