LOCAL EFFORTS
Haddad’s vision for GO-Emory focuses considerable attention on local needs in Georgia. His goal is to eliminate
avoidable blindness through GO-Emory’s Vision 2020
Georgia project, which aligns with Vision 2020, the rightto-sight initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO)
and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, to eliminate avoidable blindness globally by 2020. Locally, GO-Emory will work in partnership with the Georgia
Vision Collaborative.
WHO and some 20 international non-government
organizations provide guidance and technical and resource
screened 177 children for vision problems and eye disease
and found problems in 25% of the children. Lenhart and
Russ saw 40 children in follow-up exams; 68% subsequently
received glasses from the Georgia Lions Lighthouse.
In other work close to home, Haddad leads a course in
Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health to teach students
about the burden of eye disease in this and other countries.
The course, “Vision Health: A Global Perspective,” now in its
third year, continues to grow in enrollment. Representatives
of Prevent Blindness Georgia and the Georgia Lions Lighthouse, among others, join Haddad, Courtright, Lewallen, and
other ophthalmology faculty in contributing to the course.
As part of Global Ophthalmology at Emory, Emory clinicians work locally and globally, treating patients in south Georgia, Vietnam (above left)
and Madagascar (above right) and teaching public health students at Emory (above center).
support to countries whose people are affected by trachoma
and other preventable and/or treatable eye diseases. Through
GO-Emory initiatives, Haddad’s five-year plan is to bring
the same kind of resources to Georgia, where considerable
challenges exist to provide vision care to populations who
desperately need it, yet are left out because of vast disparities
in access. Many Georgians who have a potentially blinding
disorder may be unaware of their condition. Glaucoma, for
example, has no early symptoms. It is typically detected during a comprehensive eye exam. Haddad stresses that a plan to
fill in the gaps for provision of eye care is absolutely necessary
in Georgia for adults and children in at-risk populations.
One such population is migrant farmworkers in rural
Georgia, near Bainbridge and Valdosta. Last summer, pediatric ophthalmologist Phoebe Lenhart and Emory medical
student Rebecca Russ organized a two-week pediatric vision
screening initiative, the Farmworker Vision Project, as part
of a rural migrant farmworker’s project organized each year
by Emory schools of medicine and nursing. She and others
EFFORTS ABROAD
Over the past year, GO-Emory physicians have traveled
to various destinations around the globe to treat patients
and provide training to clinicians there. More than 80% of
blindness in developing countries is avoidable or curable.
Madagascar—A team of four Emory Eye Center physicians traveled to this country this year, for the second year in
a row, with a dual mission of fact finding and helping train
local ophthalmologists in clinics in Antsirabe and in Antananarivo (Tana), the capital. The team included oculoplastics
surgeon Brent Hayek, glaucoma expert Annette Giangiacomo, and pediatric ophthalmologist Phoebe Lenhart. Hayek
says conditions there are a challenge for those needing eye
care: there are only 25 to 35 ophthalmologists in Madagascar
to serve some 20 million people.
Hayek taught local ophthalmologists practical
oculoplastic procedures by performing and supervising
more than a dozen surgeries. Giangiacomo worked with
local ophthalmologists to train them in current glaucoma
2015 | E m o ry E ye 13