HE CAME FROM NEW ZEALAND WITH A VISION OF HELPING - MEET FRED HOLLOWS

Born with hands to heal, Fred Hollows was a true humanitarian

Professor Fred Hollows
A hero in anyone's eyes

Professor Fred Hollows was a prestigious Ophthalmologist. He was  born in Dunedin, New Zealand and after attending Otago University to study medicine he began to visualise a world without blindness. His work took him all over the world, to developing countries in need of his able hands and his passionate attitude towards establishing low cost eye healthcare.

Fred was a humanitarian, touched by the drug of internal humanness he was greatly recognised for his work of “polishing lenses which brought sight to the blind in the poorest of countries…”

He knew no boundaries when it came to challenging governments to listen and to provide funding for the Indigenous Australians who were dying 10 years earlier than their European cousins. He was a great man with a tenacious spirit, something that has lived on in the Fred Hollows Foundation.

With the establishment of collaboration and partnerships the Fred Hollows Foundation has been able to continue its work to help the Indigenous by empowering them and providing them with a sense of self-worth.

And into the future; as long as there is poverty and visual impairment there will always be a Professor Frederick Hollows, OM, and his Foundation.

Visit www.hollows.org.au for more information on Fred Hollows and the Foundation

http://catherineroberts27.blogspot.com.au - Read my Opinion Piece on Fred Hollows and my backgrounder on The Hollows Foundation on ending blindness in Indigenous Australians.

INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS MUST HAVE ACCESS TO FREE EYE HEATH CARE

When the late Professor Frederick Hollows, OM, decided to establish the Fred Hollows Foundation, he was sitting at his dining room table with a group of friends and supporters who believed in him and the work he was doing. His dream was to end avoidable blindness.



You can make a difference
 

In his book Fred Hollows : an autobiography, Fred said “I studied medicine so I could help others", and "five months before he passed away, with the aim of continuing and expanding on the program work he had started in Eritrea, Vietnam and Indigenous Australia”, The Fred Hollows Foundation was established in Sydney in 1992. 

Fred was an Ophthalmologist and a passionate social justice activist. After working in outback Australia he commented “It was like something out of the medical history books," he said, "eye diseases of a kind and degree that hadn't been seen in western society for generations. The neglect this implied, the suffering and wasted quality of human life were appalling.” As a result, Fred made a commitment to reducing the cost of eye healthcare for both Indigenous Australians and those in developing countries. Fred determined a long time ago that it is the Indigenous who are affected by chronic eye disease more than any other populated culture in Australia.

The Hollows Foundation is committed to implementing programs that work towards creating a better life for indigenous Australians who “have lower incomes, higher rates of chronic disease, are more likely to live in overcrowded housing and are less likely to continue their education”. Working on an understanding of the relationship between poverty and visual impairment, the Foundation says there are an “estimated 39 million people around the world today who are blind. Four out of five don't have to be”.

Finding the issues that contribute to poor eye health and help to establish “equity between people” is an important part of the work and, with investment and commitment a project called “Close the Gap”; was established in April 2007 by “a coalition of more than 40 of Australia’s leading health, human rights and Aboriginal organisations”. Their vision is to “achieve health equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders by 2030”.

Using eight well established development goals as the guiding principles for the continuation of the Foundations work, they incite that simple intervention and inexpensive medications all contribute to the greater good of this cause. However at the top of the development goals was the need to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Something no person should ever have to endure in a country as rich as Australia.

The Foundation says; “Our goal is system reform and good health policy and practice at all levels – local, national and regional – to achieve genuinely accessible health and eye health services for all Indigenous Australians”.
 

To achieve the vision of the late Professor Hollows, the most ethical way to manage this problem is empowerment in communities and the strengthening of people’s own culture so they may be afforded a sense of self-worth and, a collaborated determination that sees Indigenous Australians being given access to first class health care, today, tomorrow and every day after that.

 

CALL ME FRED

Thanks to the Kiwis for producing another great icon

Many a famous Fred has come out of New Zealand. Firstly there is Fred Dagg, a fictional satirist who spent years entertaining his New Zealand television audience; his alias John Clarke is now a top script writer living in Australia. Sir Fred Allen who was the most successful All Black Coach of all time winning 14 Test Matches in a row, but the most prestigious Fred is Professor Frederick Hollows OM; an Ophthalmologist born in Dunedin who had a vision of ending avoidable blindness.

Fred, as he liked to be called was a humanitarian, he was touched by the drug of internal humanness, a man greatly recognised and acknowledged for his work of “polishing lenses which brought sight to the blind in the poorest of countries…”

Born in New Zealand with a vision
 to save the world

 Having been a long distance admirer of Fred Hollows I wanted to know more about him so my research led me on an internet search to a list of the top 100 most inspirational people of the 21^st century. Historical names from the past such as Albert Einstein and Mother Teresa were listed as were the most current icons, people such as Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. But, nowhere on that list was there any mention of the inspirational Philanthropist, Fred Hollows.

I didn’t let that put me off, after a bit more digging I discovered that a young Fred Hollows was invited to attend Otago University in New Zealand to study medicine simply because he come up in the top 100 in New Zealand, in science. Credit where credit is due I say; the influences from his earlier life had formed a pathway to his future. A pathway that eventually led to him settling in Australia.

For a man who was born shortly before the Second World War his name has come a long way. The Hollows Foundation he established shortly before he died was recently named one of the world’s best NGO’s and is listed in the Global Journal in the top 100. This is a significant achievement. As dreams go they don't get any better and once again the name Fred Hollows is listed in another top 100.

Some might argue this achievement should have earned Fred a place in the top 100 Achievers of the Twenty First Century, but as Joe Boughton-Dent said, “Fred Hollows didn’t like to have his name up in lights but he would be proud of this achievement because of what it says about how The Fred Hollows Foundation works”.

And that’s it right there; Fred’s name doesn’t need lists and lights, he is already at the top for the more than one million people who have being granted the gift of sight. It is a gift for those born into a world which is so vastly different to that of others.

As visionaries go, this humanitarian’s work must continue. His decision to train as many people as he could to continue with the simple and effective low cost cataract surgery for those who need it most is about keeping Fred’s dream alive.

Professor Fred Hollows OM. He was a man who climbed 100 mountains to enable us all to see that in the end it doesn’t matter which side of the Tasman you were born, it is dreams that make a difference in this world, not lists.

 



“BACKBILLING” WITH YOUR ENERGY COMPANY; IT’S COMPLICATED

Energy companies need to wake up to their customers who are fast becoming the prosumer in the demand for “please explain” invoicing

I once watched a U Tube video with Sociologist Jock Young who said, “we are attracted to war, it is central to our entertainment history”. While I am not convinced my argument about “backbilling” with my energy supplier is entertainment, my war with them is real. It’s an annual event where they make errors and I have to pay for it.

Electricity has been around since the 1850’s, that’s about 160 years; you would think that after all this time they would at least have the invoicing part right. But they don’t, they continue to send unsuspecting customers invoices owing extraordinary amounts, leaving the consumer shaking their head. And that’s how I felt when I thought my energy company had made a mistake surprising me with an additional invoice only a week after paying the meter read account. So I rang the Call Centre for a “please explain”.

The Call Centre explained the energy had been incurred over the past nine months, since the installation of the Smart Meter. When I asked for more information I was told none was available so I asked to speak to someone with a little more “power”. This wasn’t well received when they snapped; “they will only tell you what I am telling you”. What! … Was that a trained robot that just spat those words at me? You don’t have to answer that by the way. I felt a serious amount of indignation at this response; that an employee felt I should pay the unexpected invoice without any further investigation or explanation as to how it came about.

Finally I was allowed to speak to someone with “power”. The more senior employee quickly informed me the account was for something referred to in the energy sector as “backbilling”. It is perfectly legal and can be the energy company’s very costly mistake to you the consumer.

What it means is, under the legislation your energy company can charge you for energy you have used up to nine months prior. Research shows that amongst high bills and billing errors, “backbilling” is one of the most common Billing complaints received by Energy and Water Ombudsman of Victoria “EWOV”.

As I listen to the justification of the enormous “backbilling”, I casually ask if others had rung to complain with the same issue. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence which in return gave me the answer I had already suspected; quietly she admitted there had been others.

I knew this account had come out of nowhere, printed off by the thousands, sent out to innocent and unsuspecting people who knew as much about “backbilling” as I did. With no resolve to my demands for a line by line explanation I was transferred to the Billing Department. As I was reminded of the debt I began to wonder if that was the true cost of what I owed. So I decided to speak to my own expert, someone who could tell me if the numbers were right, I went to my husband.

My husband knows numbers well. He keeps records and writes things down. When the power account arrives on the kitchen table he paces with his notebook out to the metered box checking the numbers against each other; I then get a mutter saying it’s ok to pay.

But not this time, this time the account required discussion; it was a discussion that would eventually turn me into the prosumer of my own energy account, simply because until that day I didn’t know a kilowatt from a megawatt.

As the dust settles and the homework is done, my husband informs me that something in what the energy company have said is right; my “error energy” must be paid for. But he said, “not the full amount”. He goes on to inform me that there are most definitely errors in their energy account.

The phone rings and in between the rhetoric of element registers and dedicated circuits, they admit to making a mistake. My instincts were right; located in a basement somewhere sat a machine that spat out “backbilling” invoices by the thousands. Never touched by the human hand, the money slides threw the envelope stuffing machine like liquid gold.

Suddenly this demanding and impenetrable number has been reduced by 75%. A few days later at the letterbox I see the familiar blue and white envelope. I open it and wonder what awaits me now, I laugh at its contents; inside the message says, “Welcome to Australian Power and Gas”.

 

 

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