Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on the motion before us today. Last parliamentary sitting week, I, along with many members of this parliament, attended the launch of In Fred's Footsteps: Twenty Years of Restoring Sight, where both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition spoke about the great work and the legacy of Fred Hollows.

Over the past 20 years, the Fred Hollows Foundation has developed from the initial ideas of Fred Hollows and Gabi, and all those who were associated with them at the time, and has continued to work towards restoring health services, providing eye surgery and looking after the sight of Indigenous Australians and of those people in developing countries.

I was recently fortunate enough to visit Pakistan. In Pakistan, we visited the hospital where the eye program is being run in conjunction with the Fred Hollows Foundation, AusAID and the Pakistani Dr Rubina Gillani, who has been one of the leading advocates and workers in that area. She has been out to Australia; she met with John Howard when he was Prime Minister and she has really promoted and followed through on the philosophy of Fred Hollows. We also met with Professor Carr, a leading Pakistani ophthalmologist. We were very taken with the work that is done there. The hospital we visited was in Lahore, but the work does not start and finish in Lahore. They are training health workers so that they can go out into rural and remote communities within Pakistan. We saw young women being trained to work with young women, and we saw young men being trained. We learned about the philosophy of the program in Pakistan.

The Fred Hollows Foundation in Pakistan works with the most disadvantaged people—people who, in the past, would have had a sentence of blindness for life. They are working in removing cataracts and dealing with issues such as blindness associated with diabetes. I do not know whether members who are present know that in Pakistan 18 per cent of the population suffers from diabetes. The program is raising awareness about diabetes and is getting the message out about how people can look after their eyes. It has transformed the district eye care system by allowing doctors to perform high-quality cataract services efficiently and quickly. This is providing services in the community and services to those people who in the past would never have been able to access those services.

The foundation started work in Pakistan in 1997. About two per cent of the population there, which is over three million people, were blind, with about 70 per cent of those cases being due to cataracts. The Pakistani ophthalmology community is strong and well trained. It has been based in urban areas but, as I mentioned, it is the people in rural areas who are missing out on ophthalmology services, and that leads to even greater disadvantage. Of course, if you cannot see, you cannot work, and you cannot get the food that is required for living in a country such as Pakistan.

It was in 2001 that the foundation also received some AusAID funding, and we were particularly interested to see how our AusAID money was working in conjunction with the Fred Hollows Foundation. I do not think that there was a person who visited that hospital who was not convinced that the money that was being spent in conjunction with the Fred Hollows Foundation was well spent. There are 25 district hospitals that were in the initial group. That has expanded and will continue to expand.

I have spoken about Pakistan, because I was privileged to visit that hospital to see those young people training, to learn about how the services are being delivered, to learn about the problems with vision that people in Pakistan are experiencing and to learn how, through the Fred Hollows Foundation, people are having their vision problems addressed. It made me even happier to learn that AusAID was involved in it.

That partnership between Fred Hollows and AusAID—not only in Pakistan but in developing countries throughout the world—is something that has benefitted millions of people. It is something that really fits with the philosophy of Fred Hollows and follows In Fred's Footsteps: Twenty Years of Restoring Sight, the book that was released. I have talked of Pakistan, and generalised that to activities in developing countries, but we can never forget that Fred Hollows started his work, working with Indigenous people in Australia—and the work that he did there equally changed the lives of the people. He was totally committed to helping those people that were disadvantaged and needed assistance with their sight, a commitment that I think every member of this parliament welcomes.

As an individual, I donate to the Fred Hollows Foundation and I would encourage other members to do the same, because it is a charity, it is an organisation, that delivers real results on the ground here in Australia and in developing countries. Congratulations to all those involved with the Fred Hollows Foundation. It is an organisation that is delivering on its goals and objectives.

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