Cuban eye care program questioned

A Guyanese MD wants a survey conducted on the Cuban program after a Jamaican study shows up to 25% of patients have post surgery problems.

PNCR-1G MP Dr George Norton is recommending that the government commission a study to determine the success or failure rate of the Cuban Miracle Eye Care programme in Guyana.

In his presentation in the recent budget debate, Norton suggested that the study could be done by the University of Guyana Medical School because of complications some of the beneficiaries of the programme claim they have experienced.

Dr Norton, who is head of the Ophthalmology Department of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), contended that such a study was done by Jamaica after a number of patients had been sent to Cuba for surgery and "operation Miracle was found to be less than miraculous for Jamaican patients."

He said the result of this study was presented at the 17th Congress of the Ophthalmological Society of the West Indies in St George's, Grenada last year July by Dr Albert Lu, Head of the Department of Ophthal-mology of the Kingston Public Hospital.

Dr Lu revealed that 14 out of a sample of 60 Jamaican patients experienced serious complications. "Complications similar to the one we saw suffered by Guyanese patients - the few that we managed to look at (privately)," he said.

The complications included secondary glaucoma, cloudiness of the cornea, damage of the iris, posterior chamber lens in anterior chamber and poor stitching techniques. Dr Norton quoted Dr Lu as saying that the problems were as a result of "poor surgical techniques".

The Jamaican study covered 200 patients and 49 (almost 25%) experienced post-surgical complications, Dr Norton said, adding that was a good reason for recommending that a similar survey among beneficiaries in Guyana be done here with some amount of urgency.

And why is the project cloaked in secrecy?

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