Cataract Chronicles-25 years
As I celebrate my 25th year volunteering as an eye surgeon in Southeast Asia. I am delighted to share photos and stories about the vision challenges and the people and cultures of India, Nepal, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. - Dr. Gary Barth
Chronicle 37 - The Surgical Elimination of Unnecessary Blindness can Depend on Who Employs the In-country Ophthalmologists.
When I helped as a surgical volunteer, Cambodia had only 12 eye surgeons in the country. That was an insufficient number for the millions of residents.
Drilled down further, the numbers are misleading. Like many communist-inspired countries, Cambodia employed most surgeons in government hospitals. The drawback was that with a government salary, neither the nurses nor the doctors had much incentive to perform surgery.
This is Heng Ton, an excellent Cambodian surgeon with the skills and confidence to enjoy reversing blindness.
To incentivize surgeons and nurses to perform surgery, international charities give them money for performing surgery. It became an accepted practice for NGOs to reward the surgical team with a bonus if they increased the
cataract surgery output.
Giving money only to the surgeon was not successful; the whole team in the clinic and operating room had to see that performing surgery was a benefit to the population and themselves.
