Olds Eyecare Clinic optometrist Rob Kloepfer has a new appreciation for Canadian health care after assisting with eye surgeries in Jamaica.
Kloepfer, 30, was in Jamaica last November with the Canadian Vision Care charity. He assisted a Calgary cataract surgeon.
They were in Montego Bay, a very famous tourist destination.
But there wasn't much time for touristy things. The first day they worked from 8:30 a.m. to about 6:30 p.m. Thereafter, it was 8:30 to about 3:30 p.m.
The need was great, so they responded.
“In a Jamaican hospital there are about four cataract surgeries that get done in a typical week there. In four days while we were there, we did about 30 surgeries,” Kloepfer says.
However, conditions weren't the same as workers in the eye care field find in Canada.
“In Jamaica it's much different than Canadian or really North American health care in the sense that these people are waiting several years to even get surgery,” Kloepfer says.
“These people don't come from a whole lot; that's what's so rewarding at the end of the day – having these people helped out.”
One of the patients they dealt with was a man in his 20s who developed cataracts after being hit by lightning. Normally, cataracts occur in older people, he notes.
The hospital itself was a lot different than one would see in Canada, Kloepfer says.
“The privacy for one, is certainly not there,” he says. “In the operating room we were in you could step out in the hallway and there were windows for every other operating room. That would never happen in Calgary for example, or frankly Olds, or anywhere.
“The care is still great for them, but maybe not all the machines are available like what's available here, the technology.”
He says the standard of cleanliness is not the same, but “at the same time, you know what? I would say that they do a great job for what they have. I think that's the best way to look at it.”
This was Kloepfer's second time in Jamaica.
“It's great, it's fantastic in fact, just getting to understand a culture away from your own here, it's really nice,” he says.
“At the end of the day, what makes it so great is the type of people you get to interact with, whether it is the other optometrists, ophthalmologists who live and breathe the Jamaican health care, or whether it's the patients themselves.”
"In Jamaica it's much different than Canadian or really North American health care in the sense that these people are waiting several years to even get surgery."ROB KLOEPFEROPTOMETRIST
