 I am Dr. Daksha Patel from the International Centre for Eye Health and I'm here with two of my ex-students who have been doing the masters in public health for eye care. This is Dr. Lucful Hussain from Bangladesh who now works with Orbis International and he was a graduate from the 2005-06 year. This is Dr. Grace Fobi originally from the Cameroon but now working in Burkina Faso with the APOC WHO. So thank you both of you for coming for this little session here and I'd like to ask you a few questions. Going back to the times when you joined the course, if you remember that the public health for eye care course, the main focus was to transform clinicians to embracing not just that one individual patient but to looking at what are the needs of their population. That was kind of the ethos of the course. So perhaps you could tell us and identify what's been the key impact that you feel the training in this MSc for public health has had firstly on you as an individual, then perhaps on the work that you've done at a national level and then your international role subsequently. Perhaps I'll start with you Dr. Lucful Hussain. Thank you Daksha. First of all, I'm grateful for our funding agencies who gave me the opportunity to undertake this course like Orbis International, Defeat, British Council, Task Force Life. And one thing I must say before taking this course I was purely clinician. As I must say I was 80% clinical ophthalmologist and 20% community ophthalmologist. But after taking this course I have now become 80% community ophthalmologist and only 20% clinical ophthalmologist. And before the course I was involved with only 1 million people in a small district of Bangladesh. Now I'm engaged over 1 billion of people in South Asia region to fight against the avoidable blindness. This is the change which the course has brought on me. And I am greatly, I must appreciate our facilitators, our course coordinators and all of our mentors that this impact has bring me by these courses. What would you say are the key skills that you picked up on the course? Definitely understanding the epidemiology of the eyes, common eye problems in the community, the trends in the eye diseases and what are the plans to be undertaken according to the change in disease pattern. So there are many changes which actually brought in my skills. And I found this course is one of the basic foundations where I can offer my skills, both clinical and public health skills. Grace, perhaps you could highlight what has been your experience having done the course perhaps a little bit longer than lookful Hussain. You were a graduate from 2001 too and maybe you can talk us through your experience again at the, at your individual level, national and international. Yeah, thank you very much Daksha. I must also thank all those that have in one way or another contributed to making me come to this change, especially this institute for those who created it, who had the brilliant idea to put in place this institute. And to site servers and CBM who gave me the opportunity to actually go to the institute and have this mind-changing experience. But let me just say that I graduated as an undergraduate from Cameroon, did postgraduate in Glasgow, Western Infirmary, went back to Cameroon and worked as an ophthalmologist for quite a while. But I was bit by bit I became very frustrated doing the clinical work because you would realize that though the need is there, you know there are patients out there for cataract surgery for instance. But you hardly see them coming to the hospital. We had a very hard time trying to get patients to the hospital and increase our cataract surgical rate. And I was really frustrated. But then when I came to the institute and I understood a little bit more about the important role the community has to play to determine their own health outcomes. And sitting at the hospital level, I was only seeing the tip-off of the ISP. I think that was the fundamental change that I came out with at the then International Center for IEL. And when I went back, I thought I should not sit in the hospital, but go to the community, work with the community, ask their problems, diagnose the problems with them, develop solutions and plans with them to solve it. And that has brought me into working most specifically with River Blindness Control. And now I'm working with WHO, the African Program for Angus O'Casis Control, which is the organization responsible for distributing IV-Mectin. And the strategy we are using is community directed strategy. Why by the community themselves select who will distribute for them, how they are going to distribute, when they want to drug, etc., etc. So, fundamentally, I am a program manager today, trying to determine policy, putting in place sustainable systems for drug distribution in 20 countries in Africa. And I do this thanks to what I learned from the community, the ICH Center in London. I'm very grateful. And to you, Daxia particularly. I think one of the strengths of the course is that suddenly it makes the ophthalmology unable to understand the evidence that's in front of them. And then what to do with the evidence that's been presented to them. And you both have certainly reflected a true career shift in this area. Would you recommend that public health training, although never given in the clinical ophthalmology training, would you say that that is an essential part of every resident's training in ophthalmology or would you make that recommendation? Because these courses have brought some changes in our mindset as well as skill set. So if we want to fight against the unavoidable blindness in order to attain the vision 2020, mandate of vision 2020, we have to motivate our ophthalmologist. This motivation has to come. So these courses change my motivation. And I have now come out of the room to the real world. So I have seen how the people are suffering at the remote rural places. And it gives me a real sense of happiness then. I am part of the team. I am fighting against that blindness. So clinical ophthalmology, certainly they have certain roles in getting these courses because the research agenda, which is one of our pillars of Orbit's international research and evidence, they need to undertake researches which will help in taking decisions in planning. Many of the hospitals, they do have databases, but they do not know how to arrange the data for analysis and how to take the decisions. So this course will definitely help them to analyze their data, to monitor their performances, and to take the action accordingly. So not only from the public perspective, also from the clinical perspective, this course has a great role. I totally agree because as I say, you don't want to have graduated as an ophthalmologist, work, learn the bad experience, then realize there was something you ought to have learnt even before graduating. So I really think it should be made part of the residents that ophthalmology students take. And medical students will have a method to undertake this notion of public health, which is very essential in understanding disease control, policies about disease control, and making a change, bringing a change. So I think it's very, very important that we all work towards making this part of the training of every medical student. I think so. Thank you both of you. Thank you for this telling us about the work that you have done. And we congratulate both of you on the work that you are still doing. And with the enthusiasm and with the conviction that you have in making a difference to the blind in the world. Thank you very much. Thank you. We would like to thank everybody.