Fred Hollows -
Australian Ophthalmologist - Doctor
Frederick Cossom "Fred" Hollows, AC was a New Zealand and Australian
ophthalmologist who became known for his work in restoring eyesight for
countless thousands of people in Australia and many other countries.
Hollows
was married twice: in 1958 to Mary Skiller, who died in 1975, and in 1980 to
Gabi O'Sullivan.
Fred and Gabi married in 1980 and they had five children – Cam, Emma,
Anna-Louise and twins Rosa and Ruth. Fred had two older children – Tanya and
Ben – from his previous relationships.
(Source:
The Fred Hollows Foundation)
Hollows was originally a New Zealand citizen. He declined the award of
honorary Officer of the Order of Australia in 1985. He adopted Australian
citizenship in 1989 and was named Australian of the Year in 1990.He accepted the substantive award of Companion of the Order of
Australia in 1991.
It has
been estimated that more than one million people in the world can see today
because of initiatives instigated by Hollows, the most notable example being
The Fred Hollows Foundation.
(Source
Wikipedia)
Fred Hollows was one of the four children in his
family, the others being Colin, John and Maurice. All were born in Dunedin,
New Zealand, to Joseph and Clarice (Marshall) Hollows. The family lived in
Dunedin for the first seven years of his life.
He had
one year of informal primary schooling at North East Valley Primary School
and began attending Palmerston North Boys' High School when he was 13.
Hollows received his BA degree from Victoria University of Wellington.
He
briefly studied at a seminary, but decided against a life in the clergy.
After observing the doctors at a mental hospital during some charity work,
he instead enrolled at Otago Medical School.
While
living in Dunedin he was an active member of the New Zealand Alpine Club and
made several first ascents of mountains in the Mount Aspiring/Tititea region
of Central Otago.
In 1961
he went to Moorfields Eye Hospital in England to study Ophthalmology.
He then did post-graduate work in Wales before moving to Australia in 1965
where he became Associate Professor
of Ophthalmology at the University of New South
Wales in Sydney.
From
1965–1992 he chaired the Ophthalmology division
overseeing the teaching departments at the University of New South Wales,
and the Prince of Wales and Prince Henry hospitals.
(Source:
Wikipedia)
In the early 1990s, Fred and Dr Ruit began
working together towards building a world-class Introcular
lenses [IOL] manufacturing
facility in Nepal.
The high cost of the intraocular lenses
(IOLs) used in modern cataract surgery, put IOL implant surgery out
of reach of most people in developing countries.
Fred changed that...
In 1994, one year after Fred’s death, the Fred Hollows IOL
Laboratory at the Tilganga Eye Centre in Kathmandu began making high
quality low-cost IOLs.
Today the laboratory has produced well over 2 million IOLs and is
one of six divisions within what is now the Tilganga Institute of
Ophthalmology (TIO) – an international standard, tertiary-level eye
care hospital and one of The Fred Hollows Foundation’s most valued
partners.
Employment:
Fred had done an eye term at
medical school and, as a result, he assisted eye surgeons at Auckland
Public Hospital in his first job after graduating.
In his second job, at Tauranga Public Hospital, he
made a deal with the eye surgeon to see all his eye cases and take notes
and assist in the operations. In exchange, Fred took some of the
surgeon’s ear, nose and throat cases. By the end of that year, Fred was
doing cataracts himself and finding eye medicine more and more
interesting. Ophthalmology was a trade he described as not especially
prestigious, but “good work”.
He took an ophthalmology job at Wellington, the biggest hospital in the
country [NZ]
Fred
decided he needed a diploma from the Moorfields Eye Hospital Institute
of Ophthalmology in the UK, and it looked like it might be necessary to
qualify as a fellow in the specialty after that, so lots of time and
money was needed.
He worked as a general practitioner for a year to fund the move,
“incredibly hard work – one weekend off in five – but very interesting,”
and also worked as the ship’s doctor on the way over, six weeks via the
Panama Canal, “one of the sweetest times of my life”. Once in London and
studying he worked at night as a “radio doctor” on call, zipping about
London in the snow in a Mini Minor.
Studying for the
Fellowship Primary at the Royal College of Surgeons in the early 1960s
was the most intellectually expanding period of Fred’s life.
He passed the notoriously
tough Primary exam first go and got a job in Cardiff in Wales as an
ophthalmology registrar in the Royal Infirmary.
In 1965 Fred moved to
Australia to become Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the
University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney.
From 1965 to 1992, he was
the head of the Ophthalmology department,
overseeing the teaching at UNSW and the Prince of Wales and Prince Henry
hospitals. In his first year, he set up a small eye unit at the Prince
of Wales Hospital and performed the hospital’s first cataract
extraction.(Source:
The Fred Hollows Foundation)
In
1985, as a consultant to the World Health Organization, Fred visited
Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh on short-term assignments.
Two years later he visited war-torn Eritrea and saw doctors operating in
hospitals dug into mountains as the war raged above.
These experiences had a huge effect on Fred and, in line with his basic
belief in “equity between people”, he started to work towards reducing
the cost of eye health care and treatment in developing countries.
(Source:
The
Fred Hollows Foundation)
Treating trachoma
Fred Hollows was a passionate campaigner for the need to improve the health
of Indigenous Australians. He was particularly concerned about the number of
people who suffered from trachoma. Trachoma is a form of conjunctivitis
caused by infection with the bacterial microbe Chlamydia trachomatis.
It causes scarring and can lead to blindness if left
untreated. Poverty, crowded living conditions and lack of water contribute
to the spread of trachoma.
Fred Hollows was a passionate campaigner for the need to improve the health
of Indigenous Australians. He was particularly concerned about the number of
people who suffered from trachoma. Trachoma is a form of conjunctivitis
caused by infection with the bacterial microbe Chlamydia trachomatis. It
causes scarring and can lead to blindness if left untreated. Poverty,
crowded living conditions and lack of water contribute to the spread of
trachoma.
The National Trachoma and Eye Health Program sent teams of ophthalmologists
and support staff to communities in regional and outback Australia. The
program was supported by the Commonwealth Government and the Royal
Australasian College of Ophthalmologists and was headed by Hollows from 1976
to 1978.
The program tested and treated people for eye diseases, especially trachoma
and cataracts. More than 100,000 people, of whom 62,000 were Indigenous,
were screened.
Nearly half of Australia's Indigenous population was found to have trachoma
and in some regions of the Northern Territory and Western Australia the rate
was 80 per cent.(Source:
NMA)
Experiences
& Opportunities:
Why
was Fred an Australian Legend?
Fred was famous for helping people in need, particularly people who were
sick and poor. He believed that everyone in the world should have the same
access to health services, no matter if they were a King or a Queen or just
an ordinary person in the street.
He worked really hard to improve health
care for Indigenous Australians living in remote outback communities
and he drastically reduced the cost of cataract surgery, one of the
simplest ways to treat avoidable blindness.
Fred is proof that one person can help make the world a better
place. (Source: DET)
Hollows died in Sydney, New South
Wales, Australia in 1993 at the age of 63. The cause of his death was
metastatic renal cancer primarily affecting his lungs and brain. He had been
diagnosed with the disease six years earlier, in 1987.
Hollows was given a state funeral service at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney,
though he was an atheist, and, in accordance with his wishes, was interred
in Bourke, where he had worked in the early 1970s.
Did You Know?
Honours
• 1981: Advance Australia Award for Aboriginal eye care
• 1985: was a consultant to the World Health Organisation (WHO)
• 1985: offered appointment as an honorary Officer (AO) of the Order of
Australia but he refused to accept the award because he was appalled at what
he regarded as blatant lack of interest by the government in eye care for
Aboriginal people. However, he went on to become an Australian citizen on 26
April 1989
• 1990: received Human Rights Medal
• 1990: named Australian of the Year
• 1991: received Honorary Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Science,
University of New South Wales
• 1991: appointed Companion of the Order of Australia (AC)
• 1993: received Albert Schweitzer Award of Distinction, Chapman University,
USA
• 1993: received Rotary International's highest honour, the Rotary Award for
World Understanding.
• 2004: entered into the 'Hall of Fame' at the inaugural NSW Aboriginal
Health Awards, in recognition of his "outstanding contribution and
achievement to Indigenous health in Australia".
• 2005: an operating theatre was named after him at Canberra Eye Hospital,
ACT, Australia.
• 2005: named one of "New Zealand's Top 100 History Makers" by Prime
Television New Zealand.
• 2006: named one of the "100 most influential Australians" by The Bulletin
magazine.
• 2010: featured on $1 Coin from the Royal Australian Mint as part of the
Inspirational Australians Series.(Source
Wikipedia)
Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Information and Communication Technology Capability Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Critical and creative thinking Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Personal and social capability Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Literacy Australian
Curriculum Cross Curriculum Priorities:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
Cooperative
Learning Activity
Background
Nationally, eye and vision health issues: are
responsible for 11% of years of life lost to disability (YLD) for Indigenous
people; constitute the fourth leading cause of the gap in health between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous people; and increase mortality at least
two-fold.
Around 94% of vision loss among Indigenous people
nationally is preventable or treatable, with the leading eye conditions
being cataract, refractive error, optic atrophy, diabetic retinopathy, and
trachoma. (Source: Australian Indigenous Health Info Net)
1. In pairs, you are to set up a Social
Media story about the work of Fred Hollows with Indigenous Australians using
one of the Social Media programmes found
here.
You might also want to use the
Fred Hollows Foundation!