Local doctors lead Noor Dubai

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HEALTH IN ACTION: Dr Anjum and members of the Noor Dubai clinical team.

A team of five local ophthalmologists are at the centre of the highly publicised Noor Dubai scheme, which aims to prevent blindness in a million people worldwide in the next year.

The doctors have been working flat out since the scheme was launched two months ago at the start of Ramadan.

The initiative has seen hundreds of patients travel to Dubai to undergo free sight-saving procedures.

The team is in charge of assessing applications, currently 100 per day, checking patients in the pre-op clinic in Dubai Hospital, and carrying out the bulk of procedures, now estimated to have topped 1,000.

Dr Manal Taryam, a consultant ophthalmologist and head of the Noor Dubai medical team, said they had been working until midnight every day to ensure that all applications were properly reviewed.

"We have to go through them thoroughly, we do not want to bring someone over we can not help or miss people we can help," she told MT.

Members of the team have also been involved in training doctors who have travelled with their patients from less developed countries such as Sudan, Mali, Djibouti and Palestine.

Skills in cataract, glaucoma and strabismus correction have all been passed on.

"There were a few doctors who scrubbed in with us for some cases and learnt new techniques from us," said Dr Anjum Mushtak Ali, a specialist registrar at Dubai Hospital who has been seconded permanently to the Noor Dubai programme.

The Dubai phase of the campaign will draw to a close in mid-November. A team of four local physician volunteers, including Drs Taryam and Anjum, and four nurses will then travel to Sudan and Ethiopia to work in eye-camps for three months.

The camps are organised by the Al Basr International Foundation and treat an estimated 1,000 patients per week, Dr Taryam said.

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