Cakes and Refugee Camps

My second blog must begin with an apology.  It should be my third! 

The last two weeks have redefined business at work, with a major funding application to the Fred Hollows Foundation due in on Tuesday of this week.  Ergo, last Friday I was in the thick of it and unable to divert even a brain cell to the blogosphere.  Much to my chagrin!

The final article stretched to 30 pages in length and included diagrams, maps and statistics by the bucket-load.  Hopefully we will be lucky and the grant will be awarded.  This will then help us in our mission to begin a screening programme for diabetic retinopathy - one of the main causes of blindness on the oPt – in the West Bank. 

One of the exciting elements of this programme is that part of it would be run in partnership with UNRWA, with whom we would screen their known diabetic patients for retinopathy.  Our teams would travel out to the refugee camps in Al-Arroub, Bethlehem, Dheisheh, Doura, Fawwar, Hebron and Ramadin.  There, we would have access to some 7,000 registered diabetic patients.  This is probably one of the few such registers in the oPt.  There is certainly not a national – or territory-wide – register. 

We should hear about some of the funding for this project this month so our fingers are all crossed.  We’ll keep you posted!

On a radically different note, you’ll see from the news section on the website that the annual Gift of Sight Fair is coming up.  So this morning has been spent converting image files to pdfs and pdfs to word documents and uploading them all onto the site to keep the wonderful ladies of the St John Eye Hospital Group Guild happy! 

This is always a fun event with loads of nice things (read cakes!) to buy just before Christmas.  Please do bear it in mind if you’re in London at the beginning of November. 

Maybe we’ll see you there…  And if not, watch this space for news of the UNRWA project! 

All the best.  Geof.