Dear Dr. Ana Lucía Asturias, congratulations on receiving the Else Kröner Fresenius Award for Development Cooperation in Medicine 2024. Would you please give us a look into the award-winning project and introduce us to the project’s objectives?
Dr. Ana Lucía Asturias: The project aims to prevent blindness in premature infants who are at risk of developing an eye condition called retinopathy of prematurity. The project focuses on prevention by implementing a screening and eye evaluation program in 15 national hospitals across the country without access to this service. This allows us to evaluate the babies and provide treatment when necessary to prevent blindness.
Due to a shortage of ophthalmologists in rural areas of the country, part of the program is carried out through telemedicine. In this approach, nurses capture images of the internal part of the eye and send them to specialists who can interpret the results remotely. This helps identify babies at risk of blindness due to Retinopathy of Prematurity, even from a distance.
This program offers a free service to low-income families, and we aim not only to continue our work in the hospitals where we are already present but also to eventually expand and provide this service in other hospitals that currently lack access to eye evaluations for blindness prevention.
What are the plans for your future work?
Dr. Ana Lucía Asturias: Our future plans are to continue working on raising awareness and preventing retinopathy of prematurity. We aim to keep educating parents, healthcare personnel, and physicians not only about the importance of timely referral of premature babies for evaluation but also about the proper care of premature infants in hospitals. This includes oxygen management, infection prevention, and improving the comprehensive care of premature newborns, so that we not only detect and treat patients at risk of blindness but also reduce the number of patients at risk of developing this condition.
We want to maintain the program in the hospitals that already have it, and we also hope to expand and extend coverage to more hospitals in need. We know there are 43 national hospitals providing neonatal care to premature patients, and all of them lack this service except for the 15 hospitals where the program is already in place.
We understand that we must continue working to create an impact and encourage health authorities at the governmental level to join our efforts in advancing and ensuring the visual health of all our premature children.
What will you use the award money for?
Dr. Ana Lucía Asturias: The funds awarded by EKFS will be used to continue the project for another year. This amount is approximately what we need to maintain our services in the 15 hospitals where the project is currently active. We will continue seeking support and donors to sustain this initiative. The long-term goal is to integrate more hospitals and expand the program nationwide.
Thank you very much for the interview!