{"id":3234,"date":"2016-12-13T10:12:13","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T10:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/?p=3234"},"modified":"2016-12-13T10:12:13","modified_gmt":"2016-12-13T10:12:13","slug":"distribution-and-education-exercise-in-central-region-malawi-march-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/distribution-and-education-exercise-in-central-region-malawi-march-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Distribution and Education Exercise in Central Region, Malawi, March 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Andrew Blaikie (Senior Lecturer Global health) and Mr William J Williams (Optometrist &amp; Developer of the \u2018Arclight\u2019 device) visited the central region of Malawi in March 2015 for 5 working days.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Introduction of a novel solar powered low cost combined ophthalmoscope\/otoscope (\u2018Arclight\u2019) to the central region of Malawi<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In collaboration with the national eye coordinator, the department for non-communicable diseases and local ENT and Eye Care providers 600 Arclights were distributed to health care workers throughout the Central Region of Malawi.\u00a0 Health care workers and students from a range of primary, secondary, and tertiary care level settings were given two devices each along with a brief educational package covering the key causes of visual and hearing impairment in Sub-Saharan Africa (see summary table below).\u00a0 The key benefit to the people of Malawi is prevention of unnecessary blindness and hearing impairment.<\/p>\n<p>Participating health professionals were asked for feedback on their current access to similar devices and their impression of the usefulness of the \u2018Arclight\u2019 devices via paper based questionnaires and recorded interviews.\u00a0 This process aims to inform the development of further distribution exercises in the Northern and Southern regions planned over the next 12 months.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3239 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/medicine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/30\/2016\/12\/Arclight-1.jpg\" alt=\"arclight\" width=\"923\" height=\"397\" \/><\/p>\n<p>While distributing \u2018Arclight\u2019 devices throughout the Central Region Dr Blaikie and Mr Williams were able to deliver educational packages on eye and ear examination with a focus on the most common diseases of the region.\u00a0 Prevention and treatment of blindness and hearing impairment was emphasised.\u00a0 Images of the clinical signs of serious diabetic retinopathy and ear conditions were discussed and referral criteria for treatment explained.\u00a0 The package was delivered to over 300 health care professionals and students in a range of settings from large tertiary referral centers in Lilongwe to small rural clinics.<\/p>\n<p>Arclight website:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/arclightscope.com\">http:\/\/arclightscope.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[symple_button url=&#8221;https:\/\/www.standrewsuniversitystore.com\/health\/ophthalmoscope\/otoscope\/ophthalmoscope-loupe-otoscope-black&#8221; color=&#8221;blue&#8221; size=&#8221;default&#8221; border_radius=&#8221;3px&#8221; target=&#8221;blank&#8221; rel=&#8221;&#8221; icon_left=&#8221;&#8221; icon_right=&#8221;&#8221;]Buy an Arclight[\/symple_button]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3236 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/med.st-andrews.ac.uk\/medicine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/28\/2016\/12\/Nkhoma-Hospital-General-Medical-Team-K1024-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"nkhoma-hospital-general-medical-team-k1024\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Andrew Blaikie and Mr William J Williams visited the central region of Malawi in March 2015.  In collaboration with the national eye coordinator, the department for non-communicable diseases and local ENT and Eye Care providers 600 Arclights were distributed to health care workers throughout the Central Region of Malawi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":3346,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,1],"tags":[98,293,693],"class_list":["post-3234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-export","category-news","category-uncategorised","tag-arclight","tag-dr-andrew-blaikie","tag-malawi"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 06:49:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}