How was your day?

How was your day?
I spent time today in the eye clinic and the ward supervising my staff.There were a total of 45 admitted patients in the ward ,quet a number ?
I am going home now.
See you,

Thank you for your support British Council for Prevention of blindness

After being in London for a while ,I am back in Blantyre and we are preparing for the next training session of eye health workers which will take place in Zomba on Friday 27th 2009
We are training the second group of health workers to identify blind and severe visual impaired children in Malawi
I will be talking about VISION2020: VISION2020 the Right to Sight global initiative to eliminate blindness by the year 2020 and why its important that children with visual impairment are identified as early as possible This work is being supported by the British council for the Prevention of blindness, (www.bcpb.org), through the London school of Hygiene and Tropical medicine where I am partly based .
The last group of training went well ,I was busy taking pictures of the facilitators and the participants so I am not included in the photos. This was a group of volunteers from Likangala in Zomba.Unfortunatley the intrenet is so slow i cant attach any
In less than 3 weeks time we will be going back to the field to examine the children they have identified .This is the part I love most ,as you get to see the rural areas of Malawi
Well , I enjoy being an eye doctor in rural Malawi

What do you do?

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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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Journalism can expose one to the limits

The airport seem busy today as the transit lounges are very full.I still have a few hours before my nxt flight and i am bored . Wish I was a journalist, or atleast a novel writer ,I could have been writing about all these people and the noise they are making.Being a doctor I have become too scientific and all i can think about are facts and not imaginations which are needed for one to write .maybe I should go and study medical journalism; but alas i have been in school all my life!!

Imagine the noise at the airport is destructing me from concentrating ; I am trying to blog.

I am reading on internet about how this 22 year poor old boy from Malawi has become very popular in Malawi and the USA ; infact his blog was the blog of the year in 2009 for Malawi. William Kamkwamba is probably one of the fastest growing popular young person from Malawi .Despite being uneducated and a school drop out ,he built a five-meter windmill out of a broken bicycle, tractor fan blade, shock absorber, and blue gum trees. and was able to power four light bulbs and two radios-what a fantastic job. He is currently in south Africa and is being understudied by Dr. Hartford Mchazime, Ph.D., who has become his mentor. Goggle Williams name and you will believe he is indeed popular.
No wonder he got the award of blog of the year.
I cant spend all my time blogging ; because I need to identify so many blind children out there in Malawi. But somehow I wish I could also be understudied .

William was discovered by journalist who wrote articles and blogged about him and exposed him to the outer world where he was discovered In return he has started his own blog , and talks about his experiences in the USA last year. Young guys like William need to be promoted For older ones like myself we need more support than promotion.

I will discover and expose myself to the outer world, and will chose someone to understudy me.

Don’t you think I am fit to be understudied?
If not why not?

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Wishes for my outreach eye project hospital in Malawi

Its day like today when I am in transit that I find time to blog .My next flight will be in 6 hrs time so I have a bit of time to write about comments I got on my recent blog.

I did not know many people would comment on the upcoming new Zomba hospital;
And I am thinking as I get back to Malawi I should visit the hospital on Friday 27th February and see the progress My worries are on the frequent trips I am making between Blantyre and Zomba especially that I am still using the old pickup which sight savers donated 7 years ago and that its now not in a very good condition.
We are training health workers at Mayaka health centre , near Nasawa training base or Ngwelero Its about one and half hour drive from Zomba and the road is not very good. Since its still in the rainy season I am worried that if it trains that day the muddy road will be very slippery, and we may not reach there .Indeed we are forcing the old Toyota, I would wish to have a relatively newer –less used (or brand new second hand four by four ) which would be a reliable car for the project. Its harder to find people /organisations to donate a whole car at the moment as four by four cars are expensive and with the credit crunch in the USA and UK most well wishers are reluctant to give any assistance at the moment .The priorities of my Government are on Malaria, TB and AIDS, and its unrealistic for me to expect them to give a car for the eye project. Bill Gates has not yet been convinced that blindness in children is worth intervening at an early stage so he is pumping most of his money in Africa into Malaria .Well for some time we will just have to manage with the old car you can see on the picture, but we seriously have to look for the alternatives .The other day I saw a new four by four vehicle belonging to an NGO called “Water Aid”; the vehicle is a Toyota hilux double cabin and its very good for field work I was wondering how I could convince somebody to donate such vehicle for the project in Zomba.

Any idea of well wishers with an old 4 by 4 car needing to be donated ?

Or any idea of someone who may be interested in giving us a project car in future?

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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

And to communicate with me on anything or just comment

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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

Are you interested in working in Zomba?

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