Media Release, Thursday 22 May 2008
Leading health experts and philanthropists will join forces in Melbourne today to mark the start of their campaign to eradicate a curable eye disease which continues to cause blindness in Australia’s Indigenous communities.
The Indigenous Eye Health Program at the University of Melbourne aims to eradicate trachoma – an eye disease caused by chlamydia which has been wiped out in every developed country except Australia.
Its advisory board will meet for the first time in Melbourne today to map out its future strategy and launch the new book Trachoma: A Blinding Scourge from the Bronze Age to the 21st Century by program leader Professor Hugh Taylor.
Professor Taylor, Harold Mitchell Chair of Indigenous Eye Health at the University of Melbourne, is a world-renowned ophthalmologist who worked on trachoma programs with the late Fred Hollows in the 1970s.
His work on the Indigenous Eye Health Program will see him reunited with former colleague, Jilpia Nappaljari Jones, an Indigenous nurse and health researcher from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, who also worked with Hollows in the 1970s and 80s.
“It’s disturbing that the rates of trachoma in Aboriginal communities have barely changed since Jilpia and I first began working with Fred Hollows more than 30 years ago – yet it is a completely curable disease,’’ Professor Taylor said.
“The Indigenous Eye Health Program gives us a real chance to address that unfinished business.”
Professor Taylor said although trachoma had been wiped out in white Australia about 100 years ago, it persisted in all outback communities north and west of Port Augusta in South Australia.
Currently about 20 per cent of Indigenous children in the outback had the disease, and about eight per cent of Elders had in-turned eyelashes as a result of the disease, which could result in corneal scarring.
Professor Taylor said the World Health Organisation had pledged to eliminate blindness from trachoma world wide by 2020.
“However, with a concerted action and about $20 million from the Government – active trachoma could be wiped out in Australia within three to five years,’’ he said.
“Through our work on the Indigenous Eye Health Program we aim to provide Indigenous people with the same quality and access to eye care that is enjoyed by other Australians.”
The Indigenous Eye Health Program will undertake a national survey of Indigenous eye health, investigate the distribution and utilization of eye care services by Indigenous people and examine current policies for delivering eye care services.
Funded by major donations from the Harold Mitchell, Ian Potter and Cybec Foundations – the Indigenous Eye Health Program is based in the Melbourne School of Population Health at the University of Melbourne.
The University of Melbourne Indigenous Eye Health Advisory board includes Professor Taylor and Jilpia Jones; Professor Ian Anderson, Chair of Indigenous Health at the University of Melbourne; Professor Terry Nolan, Head of the Melbourne School of Population Health; Amanda Mitchell, Professor John Funder and Ian Roberts, from the Harold Mitchell Foundation; and Janet Hirst from the Ian Potter Foundation.
Trachoma: A Blinding Scourge from the Bronze Age to the 21st Century is published by the Centre for Eye Research Australia.
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