Fred Hollows Foundation: A Case Study in Global Health Initiatives

This report provides an overview of the Fred Hollows Foundation, an Australian non-profit organization dedicated to ending avoidable blindness through medication, education, surgery, training, and prevention. The foundation focuses on improving the life chances of indigenous Australians and addressing gender inequities in eye health. It donates equipment, trains healthcare workers, and partners with organizations to improve eye health accessibility. The report also highlights potential contributions from nursing professionals, such as providing medical care, educating patients, and offering counseling. The foundation operates blindness prevention programs in 25 nations, providing a full range of eye health services and working through partnerships at local, national, and global levels, having restored sight to over two and a half million people worldwide.

Fred Hollows Foundation
Overview of Organisation
 Fred Hollows Foundation is a non-profit organisation
 It aims at putting an end to the avoidable blindness
through proper medication, education, surgery,
training and prevention (Oguro & Burridge, 2016). It
is continuously working for improving the life choices
and chances of indigenous Australian by improving
their health.
 They has different blindness prevention programs
that are operating in 25 nations throughout South
East Asia,, South Asia and Africa including Nepal and
Vietnam. It works to provide full range of eye health
services like screening, health promotion, curative
treatment, rehabilitation and prevention.
 The organisation is working through strong
partnerships as well as cross-sector collaboration at
both local, national and global levels. They are in a
mission of ending avoidable blindness and are
working globally, in more than twenty five different
nations at present to achieve their goal. The
organisation has restored the sight of more than two
and a half million people around the world.
Contribution to the Common Good
 Lack of education in women means that they are not aware that help
exist and how to get access to it. Hence, the organisation have created
gender programs, has taken education initiatives and also has
advocated the local and national governments (Penrose et al., 2018).
They also train nurses and the eye care workers from the rural health
units as well as support diabetes education training programs
 In Cambodia they had developed a pioneering project for addressing
the issue of gender inequities in eye health in partnership with the
Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the Ministry of Health and the National
Program for Eye Health.
 They have donated many equipment and technologies for the
betterment of the communities. Two of the best known examples to
mention are- they donated more than twenty lakh dollars of
equipment to many facilities in Northern territory and five different
clinic around South East Queensland. It donated two retinal cameras as
well to the Sunrise Health Service, which is an Aboriginal Community
Controlled health Organization.
 Also, they engaged in partnership with the Australian Indigenous
HealthInfoNet for improving the accessibility to information on the eye
health conditions, eye treatments and prevention (Lee et al., 2018).
 They have also provided input into one of the landmark of National Eye
Health Survey that have highlighted the gap in the eye health in
between the Torres Strait Islander people and the Aboriginal and the
other Australians.
My Professional Contribution
Being a nursing professional, I could contribute to the
mission of Fred hollows foundation in the following
ways:
 I could provide with medical care to the patients
who have undergone eye operation or surgery
 After the emergency relief, I could apply my
leadership skills to educate them about living a
healthier life and what to omit from their daily
routine so that their eyesight could remain
healthy
 I could train them how to survive and prevent the
blindness to occur again
 I would give them both physical and mental care
and would encourage them to learn that they are
no way inferior to a normal and healthy human
being, If they want then they too can lead a
normal life like them
 I would motivate them and provide them proper
counselling.
References
Penrose, L., Roe, Y., Johnson, N. A., & James, E. L. (2018). Process
redesign of a surgical pathway improves access to cataract surgery for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in South East
Queensland. Australian journal of primary health, 24(2), 135-140.
Lee, L., D'Esposito, F., Garap, J., Wabulembo, G., Koim, S. P., Keys, D., ...
& Burnett, A. (2018). Rapid assessment of avoidable blindness in Papua
New Guinea: a nationwide survey. British Journal of Ophthalmology,
bjophthalmol-2018.
Oguro, S., & Burridge, N. (2016). The contribution of non-government
organisations to human rights education in Australian schools. Third
Sector Review, 22(1), 3.
Introduction
This poster is going to elaborate about the
organisation- Fred Hollows Foundation,
Australia. It has presented a brief overview
of the organisation and how it contributes to
the common goods by their operation. It
would shed light on the overall operation of
this organisation along with presenting its
mission and vision towards the betterment
of the communities suffering from blindness.
https://www.hollows.org/Upload/FHF/Media/au/Images/2016-Annual-
Report.pdf