And Family of course

Mum, Tapiwa and Yewo


But for all other academic staff: blindness in children, cataract, Primary health care, Ophthalmologists, Blantyre, Malawi , blah, blah, blah  check our website

www.bicomalawi.org

you will be overwhelmed with what we do.

 

Zomba Central Hospital has a new eye wing

The opening of the newest Lions Sight First eye hospital in Zomba in September 2010 Malawi has seen Malawi have a total of five dedicate eye hospitals.
The hospital is a modern facility built by the Lions Club of Norway in collaboration with Lions Club of Zomba.
BICO has helped in training 6 nurses that have seen been deployed to the eye department.
Well done Zomba Central hospital for your new entry.
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BICO celebrates the graduation of two Malawian Ophthalmologists

Dr Petros Kayange and Dr Tamara Chirambo are the first Malawian Ophthalmologists doctors to graduate locally from College of Medicine; University of Malawi .They will be awarded a masters of medicine (M.Med) in Ophthalmology in 2011. The two doctors were enrolled in the programme in 2006 and have completed their minimum four year.
During their course they had exposure to research being conducted by Blantyre Institute for Community Ophthalmology, and were supervised by the Research director for BICO for their masters thesis.
BICO is proud to have been involved in capacity building in eye care in Malawi, through training of Ophthalmologists, nurses, ophthalmic clinical officer and Community health workers .
Congratulations to our new graduates.
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Good Retirement for the Minister of Health in Malawi

As per my prediction on the earlier blog, indeed Prof Moses Chirambo, after retiring as the first Malawian Ophthalmologist is now not only Member of Parliament but also the Minister of Health in Malawi.
Join me in congratulating him in his job as he continues to be my boss.

Well, no one should ever doubt that he will not perform for the ministry of Health; He did wonders in Eye care, am confident he will do the same.
Read his profile on my earlier blog and you will understand we need such people in Malawi .The link is

http://khumbokalua.blogspot.com/2009/05/greatest-and-first-malawian-eye-doctor.html

In one of the pictures I am just next to him, he is the one with the flash disc on hi neck.This picture was taken was in 2004 when we had a refresher course for Ophthalmic clinical officers in Mangochi.

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Greatest and first Malawian Eye doctor joins politics

Prof Moses Chirambo, the first Malawian Ophthalmologist is now a Malawian member of parliament and minister of Health.When I first heard that he was campaigning for a seat in Parliament; I thought it was a joke. I have always known him as a great teacher, eye doctor ,mentor and father and founder of Ophthalmology in Malawi .Trained as an ophthalmologist as Hadassah University in Israel in the early 70’s, Prof Chirambo started making a name in 1972 when he started conducting outreach eye camps all over Malawi .In 1983 , he established the SADC school of Ophthalmology in Lilongwe supported by Sight Savers International ; this school has trained over 500 eye personnel from all over SADC countries and beyond ; and now several countries including Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia have started their own training programmes using the Malawi model with Prof Chirambo helping the in designing the curriculum. In 1993, under the initiative of the Prof , the 60 bed Lions Sight first eye hospital was built and opened up in Lilongwe .In 1995, Chirambo got an International ward from the American Academy for his fight in blindness; and continued to get several awards (too many to mention). He was instrumental in teaching medical students from Malawi in Lilongwe and when I initially met him as a student in 1995 I knew I would specialise in Ophthalmology. Sight Savers Projects in Malawi flourished under his leadership as a Regional advisor and we have several buses and vehicles for outreach brought under his initiative.
Prof Chirambo was instrumental in establishing other Lions eye hospitals in Mzuzu , Blantyre and Zomba. He enjoyed doing surgery, and was very fast in theatre.
Later on when we become colleagues, we socialised every time we went for outreach camps, and he enjoyed a beer after work. I remember in 2005, we operated on 120 patients with cataract within 3 days in Mzimba District. His last assignment was coordinating the establishment of school of Optometry at Mzuzu University in the Northern Region of Malawi, and this school which started in 2008 with 5 international students has already started attracting International attention. He was honoured by the President at Mzuzu University as one of the greatest medical academic achievers in Malawi.
Prof Chirambo has published extensively International and has several articles on eye care in Malawi, and his work is quoted by most authors taking about eye care in developing countries. If you go to any University eye department in the SADC countries and say you are from Malawi, you will be asked about how Dr Moses Chirambo is? He is mostly remembered for his alcoholic working standards; being in hospital as early as 7am and leaving 8pm every day.

I have had several good times and taken pictures with him for my memories, and as he retires from the eye care sector and goes into politics I will always remember him as a great mentor. If it wasn’t for him, I would not be the community Eye Specialist I am today. But I will always wonder a man who has achieved more than a lot would want to join politics?
Are you inpired?
Should such a genius be in politics? Should I follow him? What do you think?

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Death of MOOP: the biggest causality in eye care in Malawi resulting from the global financial crisis

I have been quiet for a few months as rumours kept on circulating that the biggest project I was associated with in Malawi was going to stop. Its now official, I would like to announce the death of the Malawi Ophthalmic outreach programme (MOOP) whose sudden death of that fateful day of 31st March 2009 has left some of us with more questions than answers. Some of them are philosophical and include issues of brain such as “Is it worth for Malawi doctors to stay in Malawi rather than follow where there is greener pasture?”

MOOP has been in Malawi for many many years , had reshaped itself over the years but always survived .In the 70’s and early 80’s Prof Moses Chirambo,the only Malawian eye specialists enjoyed the support of Blue peter and Royal commonwealth society for the blind from UK , which later become Sight Savers International (SSI) .Under their funding he went all over the country with those old landrovers ,operating on the blind and making them see. He impact was well known that in 1983 Malawi established the ophthalmic training school catering for the SADC countries but also for other countries in Africa was well .The focus of this school was to train local eye surgeons and under this initiative ver 65 eye surgeons from 20 countries in Africa were trained.
In 1997 MOOP was restructured and secured through Sight Savers International large funding from EU which made the programme expand. The country was divided into five zones and vehicles for mobilising cataract patients were bought for each zone and several eye camps were organised in many districts benefiting the majority of Malawians. As a young medical graduate I saw what MOOP was doing and decided that Ophthalmology field was going to be my destiny.

Today as I contemplate committing suicide after hearing that SSI has dropped supporting MOOP and that there will be no future outreach eye camps in Malawi, I can not just see what life will be for me in Malawi. Why? When I come back to Malawi as an Ophthalmologist in 2002 and settled in Blantyre MOOP had a lot of funding and asked me to organise as many camps so that we could operate on many patients. I travelled the whole year of 2003 from Karonga to Nsanje and operated on over 2000 cataract patients on that year alone restoring sight .Infact it was communicated to the ministry of health headquarters that all eye care activities in malawi were to be supported by SSI through MOOP and the ministry was delighted

Thats the year (2003) that I felt the biggest impact of working as a doctor in community and vowed that as long as I was in Malawi I would give a substantial part of my time to operating in the rural areas.My whole blog is full of stories of where I have been with MOOP, and it still hasn’t sunk to me that MOOP is dead,but why? Well I was in the UK when the stories of the global financial crisis started emerging, and we were discussing that Malawi being a poor country, we would not notice the effects of this crisis .Honestly if I knew this was coming I would have made a decision to stay in UK and work there .Here is a doctor and his team who are ready to operate on many blind patients who are out there, only to be told because of the financial crisis ,those patients can hung? So what will I be doing in Malawi? Is there a reason for continue to stay in this country when you have a valid 5 year VISA for the UK? I don’t know but I believe God has plans for everything and maybe he is asking me to move from Malawi.

I rest my case for you to judge.

+ MOOP rest in peace RIP.
Born 1971
Died Prematurely 2009
MOOP, how could you have gone so early at the age of 38?With your departure some of us have no purpose in life and we are contemplating on changing continents. What will happen to the many hopeless that you gave sight to ?
We loved you, but god loved you most.

Dr Khumbo Kalua is a Malawian Ophthalmologist whose passion for the community was being served through MOOP and is very frustrated and bitter with the global financial crisis and its major effects on poor countries like Malawi. Sight Savers International is a UK based charity NGO that was supported MOOP. The decision to stop MOOP was made at short notice and centrally at policy level (SSI) without consultation of the stakeholders, the technical staff and the Ministry of Health officials in Malawi.

Can you help? Or do you want just to comment? Do you want to call me on +265 999958176 and +26588830232 in Malawi to send your condolences?

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Forgive but not forget the old bad times

While at the airport (I am still in transit) I have come cross some of my earlier home photos in my laptop dating as back as the 80s and 90s and they really depress me.In those days there were no phones ,computers,TVs et.c or did i not just know that they were there?
I do not want to accept that I was once mainly a goat herder, because my father had 4 cows and 10 goats that he inherited from my grandfather When I was in grade 5 (I was 10 years old then) my father gave me the responsibility to take care of the 4 cows and goats ;and I didn’t like this job. The animals were taken care by my father in the morning and as soon as I got back from school at lunch time I had to take over from him.I knew I didn’t want to live this life for good and I had to get out of the circle and out of that Ezondweni village, in Mtwalo, Mzimba.I loved school and in my small glas thatched house I had this hand written A4 paper (poster) which said “education is the way to the future” and I believed it .thank god I believed it .at that time I used to walk bear footed ,and new a lot of wild fruit in the bush which we were eating as we were helding the bush.I kept on playing to God –please give me the wisdom to become a primary school teacher –I used to love our teacher and he also fond of me as I was good at arithmetic and history.
Look at the picture of me standing while my brother is sitting, this one is from 1983.look at my grandfather and his ground children-we still have the same house. Look at my mum and dad holding my older sister who is now married. I remember my father had to sell one cow at a time for the family to get school fees and by the time I finished secondary school fees all the cows were gone and it was then that I started helping in taking care of the family
There were many other people who were in the same situation but did no get away from that village like me .
Was it because of my own effort that I am where I am today or was it because of the hand of god?.
I do not want to take the credit because I know God knew my destiny and gave me the wisdom to be where I am.
I wish I would pretend I did not go through that life and forget about it, but I can’t.
That is why I believe in those poor blind children I see in Zomba, and other communities, there is a potential that some of them may get out of poverty and be somewhere in future. Maybe an eye surgeon like myself or laywer or enginner .But they had to be inspired to work extremely hard.
We used to drink fresh cows milk straight from the cows tits (breasts) because we believed it had strong cream to make us fat and healthy
And here I am today only drinking low fat milk shake because I am scared of being fat
Are you inspired with my life? Or surprised that I went through that ?.

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Changes in my career

I used to be a consultant clinical ophthalmologist (eye specialist) but I have now moved on and I am more than that.
You see I am now a public health ophthalmologist , or ophthalmic epidemiologist as some academic friends would like to say. After being tired of being a clinical ophthalmologist who only focuses of treating individual eye patients, in 2005 I went to do a masters public health (MPH) degree at the London school of hygiene and tropical medicine and proceeded in the following year to do an M.Phil My focus now is about the community ,what can we do about the majority of patients in the community who do not present at all in the hospital and how many are there out there and what do they suffer from .The answers to these questions requires innovative research and this is now my major area of focus However I continue doing clinical practice ,and surgical operations because there isn’t anyone who can take over those duties
I am a member of the International society of geographical and epidemiological ophthalmology ,which focuses on public health Ophthalmology .Perhaps this explains why I am everywhere ,not necessary doing clinical practice ,but mixing epidemiology with clinical practice. I am also leading a study in Malawi, so you can see that I fit more in the faculty of community health than in my own faculty of ophthalmology. The truth is that in the whole of sub saran Africa ,even though there are a relatively good number of Ophthalmologists ,there are only a few of us who are interested in public health ophthalmology and as we continue to market ourselves the demand for our services will be bigger in future .
So next time you hear that I am no longer operating on eye patients do not be surprised ,I will have gone fully to my new career –public health ophthalmology

Now you know the difference between public health ophthalmology and clinical ophthalmology .
However to find out more about what we do as public health ophthalmologists’ visit
VISION2020 and International Centre for Eye Health

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New eye hospital in Zomba , Malawi facing severe eye health workers shortages

My specialist medical field is Ophthalmology or eye specialist as other people prefer it to be called .I am one of the few Ophthalmologist practising in Malawi.
We are lucky that we have had strong links with Lions Clubs International- thanks to the efforts of the oldest Malawian Ophthalmologist Professor Moses Chirambo who has being fighting blindness in Malawi since 1972. He is the person who attracted me to join ophthalmology We have as a result of his initiatives more eye hospitals than doctors in Malawi , currently we have three lions eye hospital in Malawi, one in Mzuzu, one in Lilongwe and one in Blantyre where I work. but this is not the end .The construction of the fourth Lions eye hospital in Zomba funded by Lions clubs of Norway has been going on very rapidly ,with the 50 bed hospital expected to be complete by as early as July 2009.But the major challenge is who will be working at the hospital and where will they come from? the Ophthalmologist incharge ,nurses and clinical officers .There is already currently very few eye workers in Malawi .As usual my name has come up to go to Zomba because we are a few of us in Blantyre ,and as you probably know I am tied up with finding blind children in the communities of Zomba in 2009.But I can not be in too many paces at once ,so we need to identify and send some junior doctors for training as eye specialist ,so that they can take over the leadership of eye hospital. There is also need for a lot of nurses and clinical officers and any well wishers who would like to spend sometime working in the eye department in Zomba will be welcome. Once the construction is completed the hospital will be handed over to the Ministry of Health

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