Diabetic patients to receive free eye test in all regions

Patients with diabetes can now have their eyes tested free of charge at the Guyana Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Centre at the Georgetown Public Hospital.

This service will, however, be extended to all ten administrative regions of Guyana. The service is part of the Guyana Diabetes eye care project, which is aimed at having health-care professionals trained to detect complications which may appear in a diabetic patient’s eye.
Head of the Georgetown Public Hospital Department of Ophthalmology, Dr Shailendra Sugrim explained that not all diabetic patients would need surgery.
However, in an effort to prevent blindness as a result of diabetes, regional health-care professionals are being trained so that they will have the skill to do the screening of patients who may develop complications in the eye.
“Most of these complications we refer to as diabetic retinopathy [this is the most common cause of vision loss among people with diabetes and a leading cause of blindness among working-age adults. DME is a consequence of diabetic retinopathy that causes swelling in the area of the retina called the macula] and so we promote screening of the eye because there are certain signs that we can detect in the eye before it comes to a complicated case where it can cause blindness, so the main focus is to teach health-care professionals about the eye, so that they will know when to send patients for screening and so that they can know when the parent needs treatment,” Dr Sugrim said.
A training session was held for health-care professionals in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) over the weekend. This followed similar training programmes at Suddie, Essequibo Coast, Region Two, (Pomeroon-Supenaam); Vreed-en-Hoop, West Coast Demerara, Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara) and on the East Coast of Demerara.
The Ophthalmology Department is also hosting two training workshops per year and plans to have similar training programmes in Linden, Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) and on the East Bank of Demerara in 2019.
According to Dr Sugrim, the project started with the automated screening as a pilot project at the Georgetown Hospital where cameras which can focus into the eye are being used.
“This is so that we can take pictures to detect any haemorrhaging or bleeding,” Dr Sugrim said, adding that once conditions of retinopathy are detected, the patient was then sent for treatment.
The project also has the capacity to use lasers for the first time in Guyana to treat patients.
“So we are doing these workshops across the country to sensitise our practitioners so that they can spread the work to their patients,” Dr Sugrim noted.
“All patients with diabetes should make an appointment at the screening centre: walk into the clinic to make an appointment.”
About 14 per cent of all Guyanese have diabetes. The workshops are being sponsored by the World Diabetes Federation, the Public Health Ministry and the University of Toronto and Orbis International.