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>> SOPHIA PATHAI: Hello and welcome to the Community Eye Health Journal webcast
Today I'm joined by Elmien Wolvaardt Ellison,
Editor of Community Eye Health Journal... >>ELLISON Hello
>> PATHAI ... and Dr Fatima Kyari,
Clinical ophtalmologist and Research fellow.. >> KYARI Hello
>> PATHAI: Thank you very much for joining me
Firstly Elmien if I can start with you
Community Eye Health Journal is published in English..
... and in French as well. Just tell us.. who is the Journal intended for? >> ELLISON: Well it's for all eye care workers really...
.. from absolutely at the primary level, people dealing with everyday eye conditions...
through secondary, doctors, ophthalmologists, to teaching hospitals.
We know from our readership survey that the journal is used to teach others a lot
and also .. its used at primary level to just refresh people's training
so that they feel confident that what they're doing is the right thing
Somebody actually wrote to us that "You remind me that I'm doing the right and acceptable thing."
>> PATHAI. Right
And Fatima you're based in Nigeria? Correct?
>> KYARI Yes I am
>>PATHAI And how do you find uh ... Do you see the journal being read by many of colleagues?
Or how does it influence their practice?
>> KYARI Well yes it's being read a lot by my colleagues and the other people I work with,
the nurses
and other eye health workers
sometimes my copies get lost [Laughter]
because they borrow them and then um...
They say ok I'll return it to you tomorrow and I say no you can have it because
I can always have another one [>>PATHAI Very good] or because there's an online version of it which
I can get onto - this is now -
but then, before they started the online version, um we could,
and that was during my training days, we could
um, subscribe and then get it for free, and it does get to us, so
[>>PATHAI Great] I, we just tried to get as many people as possible on the database ... yes. [>> ELLISON Absolutely.]
It's, it's really quite useful
um... if I can draw from my experience? >>ELLISON Yes! [Laughter]
>> KYARI When I was training maybe second year residency, first year second year
residency
um, there was this issue that had trachoma trichiasis surgery in it
and um...
I actually used it as my surgical tutor [>>PATHAI Right] you know,
I read it the night before I had the TT surgery to do ..
the bilamellar tarsal rotation and
I used it
for my surgery and it was very successful and that was I how I [>>PATHAI Great] started
you know sharing my experiences with others using the journal as a trainer
not just for information but also for training. >>ELMIEN Yes.
>> PATHAI So you're a clinical ophthalmologist but Elmien, I mean, what does the journal
contain? Is it only for ophthalmologists? Or
>>ELMIEN No. >> PATHAI Can anyone does anyone who reads it get instruction from it?
>>ELMIEN Yeah absolutely. We've ... I've been looking at who reads it at the primary
health care level
and in that group a quarter of the readers are nurses, doctors and community health workers
who want to learn more about eye care and who feel the need, they see
in their community there's a lot of people with eye problems and they want to refresh
their knowledge and, and learn a bit more because very often eye care is not
included in their normal training so they're really keen to learn as much as
possible and that's been growing
so .. and what we've also learned from our readership survey is that eye care workers at
this level use it to teach the patients about what's going on with their eyes because
there's lots of images and pictures and diagrams so they can see what's going on and
they use it to educate the patients' families because they might
extra care and
it's also gone to teachers
and because school eye screening is a big issue, there's a lot of uncorrected
refractive error and the more, the more widely
people know about these very basic and and helpful eye care issues the quicker
they can take action and the more
easily we can prevent blindness.
>> PATHAI Fatima you mentioned your colleagues ... sometimes maybe
steal the journal from you. [Laughter]
what about medical students as well do they sort of gain information from that as well because
Ophthalmology's a tough subject to learn
>>KYARI. Well I can't really say much about that because my interaction with medical students is
very minimal
.. but with
.. trainees, post-graduate trainees, yes they get it, they like the journal, and ...
most of them actually subscribe to it to so they get it, yeah.
>> PATHAI. And in terms of receiving the journal I mean, Elmien, we live in
a digital world now. [>>ELMIEN Yes] .. I'm looking at my iPad right now
but just tell me is there a need to have a print version because, I mean, you
can download iPad apps or read things on the internet as Fatima alluded too, so
why do we still have the print version? >>ELLISON Well if you're in the UK you don't need a print version
and we'd be much happier if you downloaded it rather than asking
for a paper copy
but in Africa particularly, which is which is really where the biggest need is
for eye care information, internet access is completely terrible in many countries.
In capital cities you know [POINTS TO KYARI] you you have decent access but even there
it can be intermittent it can be very expensive as well and to download
something i think the journal is about ten megabytes you know if you want to
download it, and it's really slow and people have to wait a long time, and so we
know that the evidence is that it's really difficult but we were very encouraged
to see that ninety eight percent of our journal readers have mobile phones
and about, I think, twenty percent might have .. we're not one hundred percent sure, but I think
twenty percent have phones with internet capability so we're starting to
move our content in a more digital friendly format so that those who
do you have access can have it so that we can serve the entire range of
eye care workers working in different settings
>> PATHAI. So people so people who do have internet access which website should they be logging onto? which website shaping up into and it's
>>ELLISON .. it's www.cehjournal.org
>>PATHAI. Fantastic!
Thank you both very much for joining me and we look forward to another ICEH [International Centre for Eye Health] and
Community Eye Health Journal webcast. >>ELLISON. Thank you very much. Thank you.