Month: January 1998

A year does not have to end in a couple of zeros for it to contain more than the average number of dramatic events. It seems 1997 was such a year. None the less, the impending end of the millenium creates a psychological momentum, however illogical that may be. Indeed, there is wide disagreement about whether the new millenium begins on 1 January, 2000 or 1 January 2001. Either way, a momentum is caused. This is particularly the case in Australia which will hold the Olympic Games in 2000 and which celebrates the centenary of federation on January 1, 2001.

This feeling of momentousness will assert itself, no doubt, in 1998. In Australia and abroad, there is likely to be greater efforts to resolve matters before the new millenium.

Several issues come to mind. Reconciliation with indigenous people is likely to become more pressing as more people sense that we will be putting the nation on display to the world like never before in 2000. If things continue the way they are, the nation will be judged and found wanting. The present Government’s refusal to apologise over the stolen generations lessens us all. The expropriation of property without compensation inherent in the Government’s 10-point plan in response to the High Court’s Wik decision will tarnish Australia’s human rights record. Both add to the sense of alienation by indigenous people from the Australian community. This in turn may be a significant element in the poorer health and economic well-being of indigenous people. The past 20 years has shown that just chucking money at a problem will not necessary fix it.
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The old woman walks out of her tiny house in the small village of Que Phuc near Da Nang in central Vietnam.

The two-room house is beautifully kept, but there is no running water and certainly no sewerage. The floor is bare earth.

Around the house is an intense garden, the size of a suburban garden, but with every square centimetre cultivated. This house has a tiled roof, though many of its neighbours have thatch. It is raining, adding to the richness of the green.

The old woman walks uncertainly and turns to find a stool on the tiny veranda. There is something wrong here. The woman gropes with her hands to find the stool. At last she finds it and sits down. The woman is blind. Her name is Pham Thi Ke and she has been blind for seven years and she is now 77. Her eyes are opaque from cataracts.

Blindness in Vietnam or any Third World country is a death sentence. You degenerate. There are no mechanical or technological aids. You have to rely on family, who invariably are barely making ends meet. No social security.
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The Fred Hollows Foundation announced yesterday that it had won a contract for the sale of 10,000 lens to a Vietnamese charity to enable cataract blind people who are too poor to pay for surgery to have their sight restored.

About 750,000 people are unnecessarily blind in Vietnam with cataracts. The Fred Hollows Foundation has been training Vietnamese ophthalmologists to train their colleagues to do the operation to insert the lens which are made by Hollows factories in Eritrea and Nepal at a cost of about $10 each, compared to about $300 for lens made in developed countries. In 1992 only about 100 operations were done in Vietnam. Now there are 40,000 a year.

The foundation will sell the lenses (on a cost-recovery basis) to the Sponsorial Association Free Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

The foundation hopes to set up a factory to produce the lens in Vietnam.

The foundation is a non-profit organisation and is supported by the Australian Government through Ausaid.

Let there be sight — Panorama.