Eyes on Belize

Optometrist Rabiyyah Giga describes her experiences working for the Belize Council for the Visually Impaired in Central America

The Belize Council for the Visually Impaired (BCVI) is a non-profit organisation that was established in 1981. BCVI has three main areas: primary eye care, secondary eye care and rehabilitation and education. There are four full-time employed optometrists working in the five purpose-built clinics throughout the country and one ophthalmologist based primarily in Belize City. The rehabilitation department consists of five regional field officers also working throughout the country.

My job was to cover any leave of the regular optometrists and to conduct outreach clinics throughout the country in remote villages, islands off the coast and companies within Belize City. In this respect no working day in Belize was the same. In any one of my testing locations the patients spoke languages ranging from English and Creole (the main languages of the country), to Spanish, to any one of the 24 Mayan languages, to a type of Germanic language spoken only by the population of Mennonites in Belize.