Professor Fred Hollows is one of Australia's 'larrikin heroes'. Known for his strong personality and impatience with red tape, Fred Hollows made great achievements in the treatment of curable blindness of underprivileged people around the world.
Trained as an 'eye doctor' in New Zealand and Wales, Fred Hollows became Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of New South Wales in 1965. He began working with Aboriginal communities in the 1970s and went on to become a consultant with the World Health Organisation. He did tremendous work in making eye health and treatment available to people in developing countries. Fred Hollows died in 1993 at the age of 63. Before his death, he and his wife Gabi Hollows established the Fred Hollows Foundation whose aim is to carry on his work and initiate new projects for providing equity of access to health in Australia and overseas.
Cataract blindness is a huge problem in many developing countries but it can be cured with a relatively simple operation using a plastic intra-ocular lens (a lens inserted into the eye). However the operation is not carried out in many poorer countries because it is regarded as too expensive. One such country is Eritrea in northeast Africa, which Fred Hollows first visited in 1986. As a result of his work there he became convinced that the expensive intra-ocular lenses (around $140 each in Australia) could be made cheaply in Eritrea. This would not only benefit Eritreans themselves but they could also export them to other countries at an affordable price. The Fred Hollows Foundation set about helping people in Eritrea gain the skills, technology and equipment needed to produce their own intra-ocular lenses. Funds were raised from the Australian public and the Australian Government for the building of a factory in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea.
Production of lenses at the Asmaran factory commenced in October 1993. Before any could be implanted in patients, samples from the first production runs had to be sent to the USA to be tested for their compliance with international standards. Final approval for the use of lenses in patients was given in January 1994. At the Powerhouse Museum's request, three lenses from the approval batch were donated to the museum's collection.
The Fred Hollows Intraocular Lens Laboratory in Eritrea was officially opened in January 1994 but there were to be problems. Ironically these came about because of Fred Hollows' insistence that the lenses be made at Eritrea by an old but proven technology. They were three-piece lenses made on a lathe by Miller Precision Engineering Pty Ltd in Wollongong, NSW. In three-piece lenses, the two haptics are manufactured separately and attached to the lens. Haptics are the thread-like acrylic springs that hold the lens in the eye.
Because of production and usage problems with the three-piece lenses a decision was made to convert to the newer, one-piece lens technology where the plastic lens (optic) and the spring (haptic) are produced in a single stamp.
At great expense the original factory equipment had to be replaced by equipment from a US manufacturer Lenstec. After nearly a year's delay, the laboratory in Eritrea began full production in 1995. It produces world class intra-ocular lenses for less than $5 and sells them for around $10. They are used for cataract management programs in Eritrea and are also exported to other developing countries around the world.
The three-piece intra-ocular lenses in the Powerhouse Museum's collection are a testament to the different facets of Fred Hollows' character.
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