The Gambia – Swansea Vision 2020 Eye Link

Thursday 30/11/2017 Today began with another teaching session. This time I was able to talk about developing a more advanced search strategy for finding health literature online. Gwyn gave another great lecture which again included lots of audience participation as he emphasised the key points he had made about eye care throughout the week. We […]

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Tuesday 28/11/2017 This morning I had the chance to teach information literacy skills to the staff and students at SZRECC. I spoke about free resources (such as Pubmed, TRIP, Hinari, NICE) that are available online to support evidence based practice. I then encouraged students and staff to fill out literature request forms which I could […]

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Monday 27/11/2017 It would have been a typical Monday morning for me it was 8:15 am I was on my way to work in a hospital library and I was stuck in horrendous traffic-except I’m in The Gambia. Amadou, a Cataract Surgeon from SZRECC picked us up from our hotel and we arrived at the […]

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Sunday 26/11/2017 Team 2 has arrived safely in the Gambia after a long flight into Banjul Airport. We set off in the small hours of Friday morning with extremely heavy suitcases. Stella Elliott our Vision2020 Coordinator had a vitrector, which had been brought back to the UK and repaired by our technician Paul. Gwyn Williams […]

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Friday is a day of prayer in the Gambia, and the hospital closes at lunchtime for people to go to the mosque or back home to their families. This is also the reason that we generally travel to and from the Gambia on friday, so as not to miss any clinical time on other, busier […]

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Thursday is theatre day in SZRECC, and four of the children we’d seen on Monday had been listed for Dave to remove their cataracts. Despite us seeing over 20 children with cataracts, 9 of them were bilateral, making them the higher priority. Unfortunately due to the anaesthetist being ill yesterday, Dave was unable to operate, […]

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Arriving into the lecture room this morning led to two dismaying revelations: one that we are now halfway through our short time at SZRECC, and the other that today was my turn to present a talk to the hospital staff and students. Dave gave a useful talk on examining children’s eyes, and then I followed […]

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Day two began with a great talk from Paul about equipment maintenance, reminding us that every staff member holds responsibility for the medical equipment. John followed this with an introduction to diabetic retinopathy, an incredibly pressing need to address soon in the Gambia, as the disease may well become more prevalent as the country continues […]

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Despite long fog-related delays in the travel last friday, the team of 4 has arrived in one piece: paediatric consultant Dave Laws, oculoplastics consultant John Roberts-Harry, medical electronics engineer Paul Lawrance, and myself, Rhys Dumont Jones, orthoptist. We had a good weekend which was entirely, definitely, 100% filled with productive work sessions, and only a […]

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I thought I had some idea about the problems facing people with eye conditions in less developed countries. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The feeling of dejection at the end of the first morning clinic is something I will never forget. The clinical conditions by and large were the same as we encounter in the […]

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