Past Events
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Cambridge Society of West Cheshire and North Wales
Forty Cantabs, Oxonians, friends of Cambridge, and members of the Chester & North Wales Medical Society met for dinner at the Holiday Inn Chester, on 24 March 2010.
They were addressed by Mr Brendan Moriarty, MA, MD, FRCS, FRCOphth (Trinity), Consultant Surgeon at the Leighton Hospital, Crewe, on the subject of “Project ORBIS and Recent Advances in Eye Surgery.”
The Chair was taken by Liz McClure (Girton and Somerville) and the Vote of Thanks was expressed by Ian Braithwaite (Emmanuel). Brian Lewis (King’s) read the Latin Ante Cibum Grace of Trinity College before the meal. The President of the Chester & North Wales Medical Society, Dr Isabelle Hughes, attended.
Mr Moriarty spoke about his experiences as an eye surgeon in the 1980s in the developing world including Thailand, Jamaica and Haiti. He illustrated his talk with disturbing scenes of severe eye disease amidst the most primitive or non-existent medical care. He showed how blindness rendered a person unable to work, so they became economically unviable and an outcast from family and society.
The migration of peoples in central Africa, he showed, was responsible for the spread of trachoma to such an extent that whole villages were stricken with blindness and rendered desolate.
He continued to show the spectacular affects of reducing eye disease that organisations like ORBIS had achieved. Yet he argued that the best cure for the conditions was to prevent them and that was being achieved by changing lifestyles, hygiene, primitive beliefs and nutrition, through the work of ‘Save the Children’ and other non-government agencies. At his request, a cheque was sent, in lieu of his fee to ‘Save the Children’ UK.
Added: 29 March 2010
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