 So welcome back to Queens Wednesday and it's time for Strength of a Woman. So this one is a special one. I'd like to call it for your eyes only because I have Jane and Sarah and they're from the Fred Hallows Foundation and they do amazing work across the country and they're here to share the story. Thank you. All right. So your cover is right there. I'd like to give everybody a chance to introduce themselves briefly so maybe you can start with your cover up. Thank you. My name is Jane Huma. I'm the country manager for the Fred Hallows Foundation in Kenya. All right. Thank you very much and thank you so much. My name is Sarah Olalo. I'm a project coordinator working for the Fred Hallows Foundation in Kenya. All right. Sometimes it's about puja and I love your work by the way and the numbers you have reached across the country, the lives you've impacted. It's amazing. We are going to get into the details but I'd like to know how long have you been with the Foundation? I've been in the Foundation for now eight years. Eight years now? Yeah. All right. That's a lot of time in your life right there. What about you? I've been with the Foundation for five years. Yes. All right. So what is your background? How did you get where you are right now? My background is in public health and after school I've always worked in the health sector. I was with the Minister of Health and then I moved to the development sector where I worked in nutrition projects and then moved to ICANN. You must be so passionate about it. What is your background? I'm a public health nurse. I started way back working with the Minister of Health here in the country. Then during the Somali refugee crisis I had a passion to move to humanitarian work so I moved to work with the Kenya Red Cross in the coastal refugee camps and also the Kakuma refugee camp. Then from there I moved out of the country or still in humanitarian work. I went to various countries, Kosovo, Eritrea, then Sudan after which I decided to come back home and I saw an opportunity in iHealth. I wanted to really get back to development work so I came back and joined the Foundation and joined iHealth so a very passionate area of work. That's a long time I see right there and a lot of your time has been spent with people who are suffering from something. I see you've spent a lot of your time helping people. I've noticed also that you both wear glasses. Does it have anything to do with your passion for iHealth? Public health. iHealth is blindness prevention, visual impairment, public health issues and that is why probably we converge within the Foundation because the Foundation is very passionate. Our business is prevention of avoidable blindness and visual impairment. So we are very passionate about supporting the government, supporting people and taking services to where people live so that people do not become needlessly blind because in iHealth you find in our blindness you find out of every five people who are blind four of them don't need to be. So you are taking five people who are blind four of them don't need to be. Four of them are preventable because iHealth the blindness is preventable but there's a caveat that services must be available at the right time where it is needed. For services to be there at the right time when it's needed I'm guessing both parties have to be involved. They need to have the knowledge that actually I can get eye surgery because the first time I heard you can have surgery on your eyes. I couldn't believe it. So I'm guessing most people are also working with this. So how is the awareness level in the country right now? The awareness level is still low in the country and especially in the rural areas. So as a foundation we are working towards ensuring that the awareness levels have been increased. We are working with community-based organizations. We are working with women groups, we work with youth groups, the men groups. I know in most areas we talk about men groups. We are rarely talked about. So basically we are working with all community structures and also the Ministry of Health just to educate the communities and ensure that they are aware that they're aware about iHealth and also where they can access the services and at what time they need to access the services because again the health seeking behavior of the communities is also still a challenge. I'm curious when it comes to all these health issues we find women always getting the shorter end of the stick because when it comes to the HIV pandemic women were the most affected and when we look at most of them women always get the shorter end of the stick in this society. Is this also another place that women are getting the shorter end? Yeah. Globally about 55 percent the blind are women so it goes that women are more affected, are likely to be more affected to be blind than men and this is due to various reasons women live longer than men. Everybody has some. Women live longer than men. The health seeking behavior women because of their traditional roles in society they rarely find time to access services. So the socioeconomic factors does not favor women so their access to health, general health and also specific to iHealth is low and you find that in iHealth specifically unless because if you are suffering from malaria and you have this fever and you can't really then you you you'll go to hospital iHealth is unless it is really painful yeah so people hardly get that awareness that I need to have my eyes checked as a routine first and by the time some when some people by the time they seek services it might be too late yeah so women uh the work of the foundation is to promote women's general access to iHealth yeah and most specifically women's access to iHealth. All right so the problem is mostly access it's not something to do with sand some scientific reason that women are more fronted yeah access is when you look at access it is awareness because for you to go and seek services you have to be aware that I need to have my eyes checked at periodic times uh access also means that services have to be available that even when I'm aware where do I get those services and when services being available it means we have enough trained personnel and not just in towns or cities but where people live in the villages those health facilities have got adequate equipment and supplies in order to to provide the services that need to be provided and we also access also means that the government is putting adequate resources in terms of financial financial resources and all this that I've mentioned for iHealth at the appropriate time and place wonderful let's go to the must knows when it comes to iHealth let's start with what are some of the causes of the blindness the main causes of blindness among the causes of blindness we have cataract which is the number one cause of blindness followed by trachoma and trachoma is an infectious cause of blindness we have refractive errors we also have other causes like diabetic diabetes which at the end state someone develops diabetic retinopathy yeah among others among others yeah all right so uh which one is the most prevalent which one is the most home of course it's cataract yeah because cataract comes with age yeah so as you age you are a potential candidate cataract right yeah so it's the leading cause of less you can be avoid about blindness all right so uh when uh cataract is growing that is the right one sorry when when you're developing cataracts uh what are some of the symptoms how am i going to feel well there are things that i should know about well sometimes it depends on stage but it starts with uh you are not able to see clearly for example and then the clouding of the lens so some people might tell you there's something white uh the spexy yeah in your in your eye or in your lens yeah so it's usually not painful so it's very easy to assume yes it's very easy to assume and normally actually in the in the villages and that's why we talk of awareness uh when someone develops cataract it is a similar that is age it is age related so that's how it's supposed to be yeah we should not be we should not be yeah so people say to bark while not uh really seeking health because because uh they they assume that that is nature nature meant it to be that uh that cataract comes and i live with it for the rest of my life and that is what the foundation is uh is changing i'm starting to change that awareness that help is there and uh you find that uh in a household for example when a mother becomes blind then you look now at the impact of that and they are not able to take care of their families and they have to depend on other people to take care of them right it's also interesting to know that personal hygiene is also something very important when it comes to your high your eye health and uh you're telling me about chakoma which is uh uh something quite uh interesting to know tell me a little bit about chakoma uh chakoma is uh a leading cause of blindness and leading cause of infection and infectious leading cause of blindness uh which basically uh is prevalent in pastoral communities uh who basically reside in arid and semi arid air counties of this country and also globally so chakoma is associated with um hygiene environments because the infectious the vector that transmits the disease from one person to the other is basically the house flight yeah among other others like maybe sharing uh towels or the leisos among like when a mother wipes the eyes of a child and then wipes the other child yeah so there is that cross infection all right yes so personalizing is something we should uh be very careful with uh when it comes to eye health all right uh so uh these things are treatable and uh these things are also preventable you can uh we can we can we can we can which were these medical words are getting complicated all right they can be mitigated uh at a very early stage and so what you are advocating for is check up check up check up check up check up and uh we uh sarah mentioned about uh uh diabetes because we know in this country in our country now diabetes is uh becoming more prevalent uh the minister of health statistics and uh one of the complications of diabetes is diabetic retinopathy that is uh uh affecting the eyes uh people out there call it uh sugary your mind yeah so the eyes are affected and it is very important for for these awareness that we are talking about that uh our health personnel uh are also uh educating the the community and especially people who are uh have been diagnosed as diabetics that they are aware and they provide uh frequent screening of the eyes so that to uh be able to identify this uh early enough because uh treatment is there all right so it can be prevented all right so what we are saying is yes eye testing eye testing eye testing uh we're also saying that uh we have to advocate we have to keep talking about eye health talking about eye health that all the forums so that eye health is on the table right in the among the health priorities always part of the conversation sorry so that is part of the conversation part of the conversation all right so uh testing testing testing uh go for checkup go for checkup somebody's watching us right now and maybe they they they think checkup is going to cost the money so i don't have the money right now uh how am i going to go for checkup this and that uh and no more money and see how do they get themselves checked uh basically uh they can visit any hospital including public hospitals uh eye check is a basic check if uh the vision vision equity will be taken yeah whereby uh the eye doctor is able to determine or to tell from the reading how fast a man can be able to see actually the vision of that person it's a basic test test then from there if uh there are any issues that the doctor feels needs to be addressed then they refer to the second stage but the basic test is is very simple and basic stuff is simple yeah it's just taking up the of the vision equity all right then from there depending on the level then you move to the next stage all right and uh the government uh now we have uh universal health coverage as one of the government's uh dealers and uh on that we also at the foundation we are invested in investing heavily on uh in training of uh community health workers at the peripheral because these are people who are living in the community so community health workers are being trained to identify eye diseases if there's a problem in the eye they are trained identify any problem in the eye and refer all right so the foundation is also working to ensure that uh through the ministry of health because our primary partner is the ministry of health that at the dispensary level which is the community that there's a trained eye health person person there even the general health care workers at dispensary health facility level they have they are able to identify problems in the eye and then refer to the specialists and then um your question about how do people afford so we are strengthening that referral system and ensuring that trade personnel because the foundation also works very closely with the training institutions to provide trade and support the ministry of health training uh eye health personnel so ensuring that the referral chain that has got trained personnel it means services have been taken to where people live and then the government our advocacy is advocating for government at county level and also at the national level to uh put resources to allocate resources to eye health this is any other health priority as i asked you mentioned but i have this part of the agenda do you love what you do i love what i do why do you love what i love what i do because um in our work you will come across uh people who are not able to see let me take that example and uh through awareness uh through being able to support work with the ministry and put services closer to the people so that when this person comes is able to get the treatment and it is very fulfilling when somebody comes that was not able to see and leaves when that person is able to see and also that moment when the eye patches are removed by the the doctors and the person sees regains sight it is a moment when it just confirms that you are doing the right thing you are in the right place and you are making a change it's a wonderful it's a wonderful change and we are celebrating international women's day yeah and when you look at um you look at picture a household where a mother is blind that is a tough life that is tough life because first of all you look at this lady would not will not be able to provide the sure because there women are the backbone of of of families they are the homemakers yeah they are they are the homemakers so this woman being blind it first of all it means that the husband or the man of the house will not really focus much on going to look for the economic aspect of there will be at this point somewhere yeah it also means that one of the children if there's children will have to stay home and take care of the mother that is missing out on most people it will be the girl child so the problem was yeah so most people with the girl child so the immediate and long-term effect first of this child missing on education you can imagine yeah the immediate effect of the nutritional status of this household yeah and then just the economic impact and not just this household but to the community to the county and to the country as a whole so there's that socioeconomic impact of blindness so when you restore sight in a it's one person's sight yeah one person's sight it is that means that you can see and celebrate with these people when they regain their sight and they start singing and cry that just that exactly so it shows it it just confirms that we're doing the right thing in the right place and we need to do more we need to shout more so that resources are located to iHealth and we also need to develop initiatives and approaches that make services affordable right now we have the public health insurance the national hospital insurance fund how do we as iHealth stakeholders leverage on this or the universal health coverage to ensure that these services reach the indigents out there in the community that are not reached because of out of pocket to reduce the out of pocket or our population yeah so we need to start thinking and working with government to ensure that what we are doing is sustainable and people are able to access services without depleting their pockets yeah so so that it's also available to every social class in the society yes i love the way your face lightens up when you speak about it and the reasons you love it i'd like to take it to you uh what are some what do you think i can do as a person who has no knowledge about public health who's in this a totally different field and i know there's so many of us out there what can we do as a person to improve or to make this better it's just basically creating awareness yeah shouting about iHealth raising the profile of iHealth and just ensuring that communities get access to services yes awareness awareness awareness right and the people who are watching us right now need to understand that regular checkups will save your life yes regular checkups you don't have need to travel to very far because these services are available right where you live from the dispensary from the health center public and private hospitals you'll always get services so don't stay at home and when be an ambassador and that is just coming back to your question yeah would like you to be an ambassador on iHealth tell somebody tell somebody ask somebody did you go for your annual eye check yeah we talked about refractive error and sometimes the government statistics show that a lot of the accidents that happen there is because we're not able to see properly yeah and yet we're on the roads so going out there to get your eyes checked at every opportunity and every it is there and services in a public hospital you'll get services they are trained personnel government personnel you'll be able to get services don't stay at home and for children a child who has eye problems that child was not born to be blind or to suffer there's help out there don't keep children at home take the children to the next iHealth facility for checkup thank you very much for that beautiful wonderful message right there do you have an online present online presence rather online presence are you on any social media platforms or or do you have a website that people can go check out your work and just see if they can get involved with it if you trust yes we have our website as a foundation we also on facebook and twitter and twitter all right just look them straight into the eyes right there as you share the handles as we wrap this up and with fred holos fred holos i think i was logged into the website here yes you are logged it's fred holos foundation yes online yes fred holos foundation online and the work you're doing is amazing thank you very much yeah i just just want to appeal that we need i have used a lot of resources and i'll take this opportunity to appeal to the international community to invest in iHealth because women are out there children are out there that need these services so help us restore site help the foundation restore site and as we work with government to address this public health issue thank you very much any last remarks it said that the eyes at the window of the body imagine being in a dark room um with the black curtains on the windows with no light how would you feel try to imagine that feeling and experience then all of a sudden someone comes and draws the curtains and switches on the lights it's like being in a blackout and then the lights come back wow so that is what we do and we are happy with what we do and the feeling we get from the community especially after a site has been restored is out of this world so it's site by site or site after site thank you very much for coming and thank you very much for the work that you're doing right there we appreciate you so much all right thank you so remember uh fred holos you can find them online at fred holos foundation and you can be part of this beautiful journey or this beautiful thing that they're trying to do for us as i promised this one was for you as only we're on facebook at y254 on twitter at y254 channel and on instagram at y254 underscore channel so interact with us ask questions and we'll be very happy to answer them or refer you to the professionals over here thank you very much jane and sarah for coming through to i am the morning thank you all right strength of all women uh quince wednesday continues in the