ForStudyingCornealFellowship

I am Undarmaa Tumurbaatar,  work at the First Central hospital of Mongolia, the first largest state tertiary-level hospital for patients coming from all 21 provinces and all districts of the city. Within the hospital, my ophthalmology department has 34 beds, and it delivers the largest diagnostic examinations and major and minor surgical procedures for patients and general public in the country (30.000 outpatient visits and 2200-2300 ophthalmic surgeries per year). However, our department lack of a corneal specialist, thus this specialized eye care is not available to the public. Subsequently, my department has been attempting to cure some corneal diseases including infectious keratitis, however, the majority of patients suffer from blindness. Therefore, I am highly keen to learn how to screen patients, diagnose corneal diseases and provide a full range of specialized care as much as possible so that eyesight could be maintained well. I am passionate that patients should not suffer consequences of untrained ophthalmologists and sub ordinary general eye care, which largely motivate my professional career as corneal specialist. Fellowship program will certainly assist in my professional development that advanced corneal education I gain lead to diagnose and treat early stages of corneal diseases and prevent corneal blindness in the community. Furthermore, the most people get diagnosed with late stages of the disease caused by a number of avoidable factors such as unavailability, inaccessibility and low quality of specialized care. Therefore, my gained knowledge and skills contribute to improve access to the quality specialized care for eye patients. On the other hand, low living standard, poor health education and remoteness of rural areas exacerbate delay of timely eye care and services. One of important aspect of practical implications through my training will be awareness raising and improving public perceptions on prevention of blindness caused of corneal scar and corneal neovascularization with corneal scarring. As our hospital accounts for 60 percent of ophthalmic residency training nationwide, I am going to teach newly graduated medical doctors through ophthalmology residency training program focusing specifically on diagnostic and surgical procedures of corneal disease related disorders and their complications. Likewise, I hope that studying as a corneal specialist will clearly contribute to the training of our hospital ophthalmology residents. Upon my return home from the fellowship program, I would like to introduce an EYE bank affiliated by the First Central Hospital of Mongolia as legal environment of donors is available in Mongolia. The EYE bank will contain resource organs needed for performance of corneal transplant surgeries. This can reduce vision impairment due to corneal ulcers, endothelial decompensation, corneal neovacularization and scarring. It is also important to make the high quality and accessible corneal disease training material available in the residency training of ophthalmology.