Starter Kit. Idea 359 of 500. Cluster 17
Eye clinics in the districts
The mechanism, from the book
Sri Lankans abroad have parents at home whom they cannot look after from Melbourne. They will pay, and the money stays.
The first step
Spend one day at a district market with a trained optometry assistant, a vision chart and a stock of reading glasses priced to cover cost. Write down how many people you see, how many buy glasses, and how many are told to see a specialist and say they cannot get there. That last number is the case for a district clinic, and the glasses sales tell you who pays.
- Who pays first
- Older people in a district town who need reading glasses today, paid for by themselves or by a child abroad who sends the money.
- What leaves today
- Rural patients now travel to the city or go without; a district clinic keeps the fee, the jobs and the record in the district.
Ask first
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what a district eye clinic must register and how it must be staffed.
- National Medicines Regulatory Authority. Ask whether selling reading glasses at a market needs any approval.
Check before you spend
What an optometry assistant may lawfully test and sell, and which cases must be referred to a doctor, before you set up at any market.
Find out these three numbers
- How many people were seen in one market day?
- How many bought glasses, and at what price?
- How many said they could not reach a specialist?
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.