Dr Chowdhury : Chief Medical Officer (Ophthalmology) and Head of Department: Stanger hospital eye care centre

STANGER PROVINCIAL HOSPITAL EYE CARE CENTRE
Dr Chowdhury
Chief Medical Officer and Head of Department: Stanger Eye Care Centre
Advisor; Stanger Hospital Telemedicine and Video conferencing unit

Pioneer of Stanger Hospital Eye Care Centre and Stanger Hospital Telemedicine and Video Conferencing Unit

Dr. Chowdhury started his ophthalmology carrier as a SMO in department of ophthalmology at Umtata Academic Health Complex, Umtata, South Africa, where he got motivated enough to register as a post graduate student in Ophthalmology with College of Medicine of South Africa and studied towards "Diploma in Ophthalmology" which he successfully obtained in May 2001.

Dr.Chowdhury had an extensive training in Glaucoma and Cataract surgery.
Dr.Chowdhury joined as a Head of Department and Chief Medical Officer at Stanger Hospital Eye Care Centre in March 2004.

Currently Dr.Chowdhury is a final year postgraduate student in “M Med (Telemedicine)” (University of Kwazulu Natal), where his main interest is Tele-ophthalmology.

A Message from Dr. Chowdhury:

The major cause of blindness in South Africa is cataract. When a person is blind due to cataracts, that person’s life is not as enjoyable as that of a normal sighted person. He or she becomes dependant on someone else for everything; even to get a grant that person seeks help from his surroundings.

You close your eyes….you will see nothing …your whole world is dark….you need light…and if this blindness is preventable and can be cured by doing a 45 minute cataract surgery with an implant….then go for it…Keep smiling.

Also by setting up multiple cataract surgery centre as well as tele-ophthalmology service in South Africa especially Kwazulu Natal, we can do lot better than what we are doing now.
We need to talk less and work hard!!! We need to implement our dream.

My dream

Store-and-forward tele-ophthalmology consultations: A better solution for Eye Care service in South Africa.

Tele-ophthalmology is the use of information and communications technology to enable the practice of ophthalmology between geographically separated individuals and offers solutions to this kind of serious problem. The impact of tele-ophthalmology system is currently the focus of new research programs across the world.
The use of telemedicine (Tele-ophthalmology) for remote consultation and management advice for eye care service between the tertiary care hospital and district level hospital is extremely valuable. With the use of store and forward tele-ophthalmology facility, where a digital slit lamp, a fundus camera and a high speed e-mail service is use to provide valuable service to remote and isolated areas where infrastructure is limited and allow referral of eye patients from district eye care service to the centers of excellence at a distance and in reasonably less waiting time.

[ Stanger Hospital | Eye Care Centre ]

KZN Department of Health