Photo courtesy of Sandy Scheltema/The Age

Vietnam: Thousands more can see thanks to Fred Hollows

Vietnam is taking big steps to eliminate avoidable blindness according to former students of Professor Fred Hollows who are now two of the country’s leading ophthalmologists.
Professor Fred Hollows examines the eye of a young boy at the Vietnam National Institute of Ophthalmology in Hanoi in 1992. Photo by Michael Amendolia

Professor Do Nhu Hon and Nguyen Chi Dung say that the visit by Professor Fred Hollows to Vietnam in1992 - introducing modern cataract surgery - led to a revolution in Vietnamese ophthalmology.

Professor Hon is the Director of the Vietnam Institute of Ophthalmology and Dr Dung is its Head of the Preventive Department.

“In 1991 there were just 17,000 cataract surgeries done in Vietnam - today there are over 150,000 including 125,000 performed in the Government sector,” said Dr Dung.

“But we need to get to 300,000 surgeries a year in order to eliminate avoidable blindness.”

In 2002, there was 4.6 percent of the Vietnamese population aged 50 years and older who were blind. In 2008, the rate was 3.2 percent.

Professor Hon is responsible for a staff of 450 – including 100 ophthalmologists based out of the Vietnam Institute of Ophthalmology in Hanoi, where 30,000 operations were carried out last year alone.

He says The Fred Hollows Foundation was the first overseas blindness prevention organisation to come to Vietnam.

According to Dr Dung, “Professor Fred Hollows was an active and frank man. He came to Vietnam even though he was sick, worked all the time, teaching us. When we did something wrong, he always told us to do it better.”

The Fred Hollows Foundation supports the work of the Vietnam Institute of Ophthalmology and works in 16 provinces throughout Vietnam.