The Macular Degeneration Foundation (MDF) will be renamed the Macular Disease Foundation Australia and will expand its range of services to support the macular disease community more broadly.
The move to do so was unanimously agreed at the Annual General Meeting, which was held at the MDF national office in Sydney on 11 December.
Logical Progression
Professor Paul Mitchell said the decision to shift the MDF focus from Macular Degeneration to Macular Disease was logical.
“The macula is affected by many more diseases than Macular Degeneration. In fact for every person with Macular Degeneration, there is another person with a different macular disease – such as diabetic macular oedema, macular hole and retinal vein occlusion. Often people with these diseases are much younger than the people with Macular Degeneration.
The newly named Macular Disease Foundation Australia will work to reduce the incidence and impact of all macular diseases.
“Anti-VEGF looks as if it can treat some of these macular diseases as successfully as it is treating Macular Degeneration, but the problem is there is no approved funding for this to occur.”
The newly named Macular Disease Foundation Australia will work to reduce the incidence and impact of all macular diseases.
During the AGM it was announced that Dr. Bamini Gopinath is the recipient of the Blackmores Dr. Paul Beaumont Research Fellowship for 2013-14.
Dr. Gopinath is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Vision Research, Westmead Millennium Institute. She will work under the supervision of Professor Paul Mitchell on important research to improve knowledge of the nutritional and lifestyle risk for Macular Degeneration and protective factors –particularly dietary antioxidant and supplement intake, diet quality and food groups.
Her research will involve a detailed analysis of the Blue Mountains Eye Study, the first large population-based study of age-related eye disease in Australia.
