Vision Excellence Awards: Chimgee Chuluunkhuu

Dr. Chimgee Chuluunkhuu heads the Mongolian Ophthalmologist’s Society (MOS) and is the Country Director in Mongolia for Orbis International, based in Ulaanbaatar, the capital. Since 2013, she has been instrumental in supporting the evolution and growth of pediatric eye health infrastructure and services in the country, working closely with key stakeholders and esteemed partners. In collaboration with the National Center for Maternal and Child Health, Chimgee has helped to develop local clinical protocols and further strengthen services for screening and treating retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), work that has supported the development of national guidelines for ROP management and has been recently recognized in international publications.

Given Mongolia’s extraordinarily low population density with a significant nomadic community outside of the capital, Chimgee has led innovative programs focusing on providing eye care services to low density rural populations and critical clinical training for rural based eye health professionals including training a cadre of refractionists, introduction of self-refraction services and telehealth mentorship. To underpin these achievements, her tireless advocacy efforts helped to support national implementation of a database for tracking pediatric eye care. She has also been supporting the coordination and collaboration on a project involving multiple stakeholders within the public health, government and civil society sectors to improve the screening and eye care treatment for people living with diabetes in both urban and rural areas in Mongolia.

For the past three years, she has served as the President of the MOS and is considered an esteemed colleague and mentor of many budding ophthalmologists. She specializes in vitreoretinal medicine and received a MPH from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for her thesis, “Evaluating diabetic retinopathy among registered diabetics in urban and rural Mongolia”. She has spoken at previous IAPB and APAO meetings about the challenges inherent to the Mongolian context in developing and delivering quality eye care. Chimgee embodies “excellence” in all that she works toward and builds in Mongolia, and she has been a leader in bringing stakeholders together to change, evolve and strengthen eye care services, practices, and networks across the country.