Opening Eyes

<p>Senior ophthalmology student Dr Hugh Ringland Taylor was in the field with the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program with Professor Fred Hollows in the 1970s. Professor Hugh Ringland Taylor AC decided to change the course of his life in his late fifties in 2006. Soon he was the Harold Mitchell Professor of Indigenous Eye Health at the University of Melbourne closing the gap for vision some more and attacking trachoma object total elimination of Australia's 'sandy blight' <em>Chlamydis tracomatis</em> extinct.</p><p>True he had studied trachoma in five continents. He'd even written the first book on it to be published for decades <em>Trachoma: a blinding scourge from the Bronze Age to the 21st century</em> his update covering a revolution in eye health delivery and blindness prevention. He had top-drawer credibility at WHO and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. But this goal required diplomacy lobbying connecting people community liaison and listening advertising the magic of meeting AFL legends in the flesh education fund raising financial management and dealing with whatever arises. Walls between medical disciplines around bureaucracies state borders wherever are there to be climbed. Readers will be surprised by what a public health campaign involves.</p><p>For 13 years he was a researcher of trachoma onchoceriasis and other causes of blindness at Johns Hopkins University Maryland its famed Wilmer Eye Research Institute largely. His work on the effect of a band of ultra-violet light on the eyes of the watermen who collect crustaceans and molluscs in Chesapeake Bay had ripple effects in China Taiwan South Korea and Singapore. By law schoolchildren there must spend 60 minutes a day outside a myopia prevention measure.</p><p>In the 1990s Hugh was the Ringland Anderson Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Melbourne. He was the founding director of the Centre for Eye Research Australia CERA now an international leader.</p><p>Hugh lives in Melbourne with his wife Liz Dax AM. They have four adult children and seven grandchildren.</p>