The Australian Government will fund a national program to provide eye health testing equipment, training and support aimed at arresting the incidence of diabetes related eye disease in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Diabetes related blindness in Aboriginal Australians is 14 times higher than in non-Indigenous populations and 94 per cent of vision loss in Aboriginal communities is preventable or treatable.1
The program will fund the installation of retinal cameras, aiding increased rates of diabetic retinopathy screening by Indigenous primary health care services and supporting referral pathways for comprehensive eye examinations.
Additionally, training will develop the skills of general practitioners to interpret images taken with the retinal camera and understand when patients need to be referred to an optometrist or ophthalmologist. Further health knowledge gained will also enable health workers in Aboriginal health services to explain the impact of undiagnosed or untreated eye health disease to the patient.
Brien Holden Vision Institute successfully tendered to coordinate the new program Provision of Eye Health Equipment and Training supported by the Department of Health, and will co-lead it with The Australian College of Optometry through a consortium approach with the Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia, the Centre for Eye Health and Optometry Australia.
The consortium will work collaboratively to implement the integrated program with guidance from an advisory group of representatives from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health service sector. The program will run until June 2019 and will greatly increase access to detection and appropriate care of eye disease for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within Australia.
Mitasha Yu, Regional Director for Asia Pacific, Brien Holden Vision Institute said: “We are greatly motivated by this new opportunity of increased resources to continue working with the Aboriginal eye health coordinators and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services. We believe the consortium can strategically make further inroads towards the inequalities in eye care that exist within Australia, and we are grateful to the Commonwealth Government for making these funds available.”
Maureen O’Keefe, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian College of Optometry said, “The supply and maintenance of eye health testing equipment in primary care clinics and training in its use, will improve access to timely detection, management and treatment of eye disease in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and assist in preventing avoidable blindness. We look forward to working with the consortium to address and arrest the rising rate of diabetes related blindness in these affected communities.”
Reference
1. Taylor, HR, J Xie, S Fox, RA Dunn, AL Arnold and JE Keeffe. ‘The Prevalence and Causes of Vision Loss in Indigenous Australians: The National Indigenous Eye Health Survey’. Medical Journal of Australia 192, (2010): 312–318
