With Guyana now expected to significantly enhance its health care portfolio to keep pace with the country’s envisaged broader development trajectory, the local Optical Care Service, Optique Vision, has disclosed that it is investing in the establishment of a new Optical Care Hospital at its existing 350 New Market street location.
The disclosure by the company’s Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, Dhani Narine on Friday September 29 was made as part of an event held at the Herdmanston Lodge on Friday September 23 to mark the entity’s tenth year of service to the eye care industry in Guyana.
On an occasion when employees were publicly recognized for their respective contributions to the growth of the company and where ten (10) sight-challenged children were gifted spectacles, Narine disclosed that within a year Optique Vision Care will be taking its service to the country’s eye care industry to a higher level by establishing the country’s first ever privately-run Speciality Eye Care Hospital in the country. In his presentation, Narine said that the company is seeking to establishing the new facility within a year. He told the media and invitees to the anniversary event that construction work on the first phase of the project is underway and that, when completed, the new Hospital will provide a range of eye-care services, including surgeries, to complement the services already on offer.
Co-founder of the establishment and the company’s Administrative Director, Dr. Madonna Narine, disclosed in her own presentation at the event that the suite of services which the new hospital will offer will include retinal detachment-related treatment a service which she said, patients must currently travel overseas to secure. The new facility will also offer cataract surgeries, Dr. Narine said. Some of these services will be offered free of cost to the less fortunate, the Hospital’s Administrative Director disclosed.
In an exchange with the Stabroek Business after the conclusion of the formal segment of the event, Dr. Narine told Stabroek Business that the decision to provide free service to needy cases had derived from her personal desire to ‘give back.’ She said that ‘giving back’ through the vehicle of patient care had long been one of her preoccupations. It had been born, she said, during her tenure as part of the University’s Optometry Programme. In this regard she said that she was particularly concerned with targeting children with eyesight challenges. Her own ‘vision’ for giving back, she said, went beyond ‘gifting’ eye tests and spectacles. “It is about offering comprehensive eye examination incorporating diabetes, hypotensive conditions and others that can impact on vision.”
Optique Vision was launched at Helena No. 1, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara, on September 21, 2013. Over the decade of its existence it opened branches at Grove on the East Bank, Demerara (which Branch is now located at the Amazonian Mall at Providence).
According to the company’s Chief Executive Officer, over the years, Optique Vision had incrementally added services and products associated with the sector. These, he said, had included Diabetic Retinopathy and the provision of diagnostic tests, and Retinal Photography, Additionally, the company had also moved to develop training policies and procedural manuals as well as to strengthen of strategic partnerships with Consultants in the field. He named Dr. Sugrim and Dr. Hinds as two professionals with whom such whom the company had established such partnerships.
Among the accomplishments of which the company is particularly proud, Mr. Narine said was Optique Vision becoming the first local company in the sector, in 2013/2014, to employ Optometrists trained at the University of Guyana and the first to implement an Electronic Health Record System in Guyana.
As part of its 10th Anniversary Programme the company has ‘gifted’ eye tests and spectacles to more two hundred (200) from across Guyana. This, Dr. Narine told the Stabroek Business, was in keeping with the company’s commitment to ‘giving back’ to communities. She noted that Optique Vision Care will continue to focus on continuing to pay attention to sight issues children for spectacles, and some adults will enjoy some of the products and services free of charge when the hospital is established.
