Eye Health Hero: Faraja Mlipano

Faraja Mlipano (32) is an energetic person who works as an assistant ophthalmic nurse at Mlimba Health Centre in Mlimba District in Morogoro region in Tanzania. Faraja is a very hardworking person who loves to help patient at the centre. Before embarking into eye care Faraja has been working at ICU and labour ward since 2015 when he first employed at St Francis referral hospital as assistance nurse officer. In 2017 he got employed with the government as assistance nurse officer and posted at Mlimba at the Child Health (RCH) Clinic. In 2018 he was lucky to get support from Eye Care Foundation to a three months training as Assistance Ophthalmic nurse. After coming back from his training as ophthalmic nurse Faraja dedicates each Monday for treating patients with eye problems and the rest of the week he helps to work at mother and child (RCH) due to limited number of health staff.

Faraja is considered to be among the Eye Health Care Heroes since he has been working so hard to help people in Mlimba and nearby places. Despite his single day that he has dedicated for eye care services still he continues throughout the week to attend emergency eye cases while at mother and child clinic.

His greatest ambition is to see a raised eye clinic with full of workers that will assist him to work freely and effectively as for now he is overloaded with numerous RCH asks and limited instruments for eye care services. Despite insufficient ophthalmic equipment and staff at the centre, Faraja shows positive growth excitement in this eye care work.

Most patients that are treated by Faraja are those with Allergy, trauma, injury, bacterial conjunctivitis and those with foreign body. Additional sensitive cases such as those with refractive error, glaucoma and cataract are being referred to St. Francis and Morogoro regional referral hospital for further treatments.

Faraja enjoys collaborating with other eye partners especially Eye Care Foundation as they usually have one comprehensive eye camp at his centre each year. This helps to improve and sharpen his practice with senior staffs to push harder in the fight to end avoidable sight loss.

“Bigger things starts with smaller accomplishments” Meaning the smaller things done at Mlimba brings bigger impacts to peoples life’s.”

– Faraja Mlipano