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Coming from a family that was not well informed about eye health made Foster Phiri develop an interest which later became a career fascination. The passion could not let her just sit and do nothing about it, she went on to study Ophthalmology.
The 35 year old Registered Ophthalmic nurse working at Chingola Dental and Eye clinic is always overjoyed to meet new patients that have eye diseases. Many people in the communities of Chingola are not well informed about eye health hence the joy when she sees patients visit the clinic.
Working as a Registered Nurse was not enough for Foster, she has always wanted to treat eye conditions. Through Orbis, her passion came to life she received a scholarship to study Ophthalmology at Chinama in the academic year 2017 to 2018.
Since 2018 Foster has been practicing as a Registered Ophthalmic Nurse, a dream that has been fulfilled.
Foster’s work is complimented by that of Community Health Workers who refer patients to the clinic. Some patients need minor surgeries that are conducted at the clinic whilst those that need specialist treatment are referred to Kitwe Teaching Eye Hospital.
“With Community Health Workers (CHW) on board there are more patients numbers with eye conditions coming through and it is exciting to see eyes that are almost going blind get the vision restored,” said Foster.
The lessons provided to the community Health Workers on phone have paved the way for the Ophthalmic staff not to get overwhelmed with work, but to focus on priority tasks while CHWs frequently serve the community by conducting sensitizations using the lessons.
Foster has been advocating on addressing some of the misconceptions that come with CHWs from the communities, one of them being “when one goes for cataract surgery the surgeons scrape the upper layer of the eye” instilling fear in people to visit the clinic.
“Orbis has done so much for sight, I want to give back to Orbis for making my dream come true by advocating for zero blindness wherever I go,” said Foster.
