Fred+Hollows,+eye+doctor+who+helped+the+poor

=Fred Hollows, eye doctor who helped the poor=

Fred Hollows AC (1929-1993) was an Australian ophthalmologist* (eye doctor). He is famous for helping to restore the eyesight of thousands of people who had gone blind.

He was born in New Zealand and went to university in Wellington. He did an Arts degree, and studied in a seminary to be a minister of religion. But he worked at a hospital for mentally ill people in his holidays and this made him want to help people in more practical ways. So he decided to study medicine in Otago. He did further training in England and Wales, and then moved to Australia. He became an Australian citizen in 1989.
 * Early Life**

In 1965 Professor Hollows started work at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney. There he saw Aborigines with eye diseases that were unusual in modern Australian cities. When he visited Aborigines in their homes in the outback he found that many of them had a disease called trachoma which causes blindness. He went back to Sydney and set up the Aboriginal Medical Service to get rid of trachoma in Australia.
 * The Aboriginal Medical Service**

Trachoma is quick and easy to treat and Fred's teams of health workers were able to help thousands of people. They visited more than 460 Aboriginal communities, tested the eyesight of 62,000 Aborigines and treated 27,000 of them for trachoma. They did 1,000 operations to give these people back their eyesight. But many Aborigines still had other health problems so Fred campaigned for better services to help them.

Fred Hollows visited Nepal in 1985, Eritrea in 1987, and Vietnam in 1991 and saw the same problems. So he set up a program to train local health workers to do eye surgery. He also set up factories to make special lenses cheaply because these countries were poor.
 * Help for overseas countries**

He was awarded Officer of the Order of Australia in 1985 but he refused it because he thought the government wasn't doing enough to help Aborigines. In 1990 he was Australian of the Year and finally accepted the award of Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 1991. You can see his image on the 2010 $1 coin.
 * Awards**

After he died in 1993, The Fred Hollows Foundation was started to raise money so that his work could go on without him.
 * After his death**


 * Say op-thal-om-ol-oj-ist
 * Say track-o-ma

[|Fred Hollows, Wikipedia] Famous Australians, Australian Library, Heinemann, 1997, p10-13 NB The photo of Fred Hollows is used here for educational purposes only, in the belief that this is. However, if this is not the case please contact [|the wiki owner, Lisa Hill] and it will be removed.
 * Sources:**