Imagine being told you're going blind – by someone you've never even met, it's happening in New South Wales. But the good news is – it comes with treatment. The government's sending high-tech cameras into rural and remote communities. Giving residents access to doctors – hundreds of kilometres away.
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00:00John Reid from Wagga was born with a misshapen cornea. He had transplant surgery to restore
00:08his vision, but his eye later got so badly infected he was at risk of losing it.
00:14The doctor that I saw in Wagga told me that my eye could literally explode within a 24
00:20hour period because of how bad the infection had got originally, but Sydney got it stable.
00:25He's been treated by some of the country's leading experts at the newly named Gadigal
00:29Clinic at the Sydney Eye Hospital. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are three
00:34times more likely to have visual impairments than the wider population, but travelling
00:39from a regional area to see a specialist can be a major barrier to diagnosis. So the clinic's
00:45been trialling these retinal cameras that can be installed in remote communities. They're
00:50simple to use and send high quality images to doctors hundreds of kilometres away.
00:56This has now allowed us to connect with remote locations in order to do real time assessment
01:05of patients who come in with suddenly loss of sight.
01:08Tamworth and Moree are the first recipients, but the Health Minister wants to build a wider
01:13network of cameras to combat a chronic shortage of regional specialists across the state.
01:19What I've said from day one is we need to look at technology to be able to deliver the
01:23very best of care in some of the most remote communities in New South Wales.
01:29It could save John a 10 hour round trip for a basic check up.
01:33It was such a quick process and having something like that in Wagga would be amazing.
01:39A vision for better care that's coming into focus.