Yuba City doctor gives service worldwide

The facts:

In Ethiopia, between 600,000 to 700,000 citizens are blind due to cataracts. Ratio of ophthalmologists to population: 1 to 887,000.

In the United States, the ratio of ophthalmologists to population is 1 to 17,000.

However, those thousands of people in Ethiopia are not forgotten. Many American and European doctors take time out of their lives to travel to the impoverished country and donate their talents. One of those stepping in to fill that gap is Dr. Pranav Amin, an ophthalmologist at Sutter Medical Foundation.

Amin travels to Ethiopia once a year to the American Academy of Cataract Surgery Foundation's Robert M. Sinskey Eyecare Clinic outside Addis Ababa to perform delicate cataract surgeries and train Ethiopian surgeons and other medical professionals to care for their country's citizens.

The Sinskey Clinic, which opened in November 2005, is one of the few permanent facilities offering cataract surgery in the entire Horn of Africa. It has just one full-time Ethiopian ophthalmologist, Dr. Kefyalew Regassa Gobena, according to the foundation's website. For the past four or five years, Amin has assisted at the clinic, ASCRS Foundation director Don Bell said.

Bell explained that when the foundation opened the clinic, the doctors there weren't well trained, but Amin has changed that. "He was the first person to teach surgery to the local doctors, so that patients don't have to wait for foreign doctors to fly in but can be treated all year long." Bell said the number of patients treated at the clinic has risen from 1,500 to 12,0000 a year. "This has worked out very well."

Bell added, however, that despite the improvements, Ethiopia still presents a particularly challenging problem with its rampant eye diseases and glaring shortage of ophthalmologists.

Roundabout path to Yuba City

Amin, who moved to the Yuba-Sutter area 11 years ago with his wife, traveled a roundabout journey to come to Yuba City.

Born and raised in India, Amin's first profession was as a television game show host. He said it was a wonderful time and he enjoyed the adoration, but his mother didn't approve. "She said that it was OK for a kid, but that's not what our family does." His father is a dedicated doctor.

In 1981, Amin took up the family profession and began his medical training, graduating in 1986.

After completing his internship and residency in 1990, Amin came to the U.S. through a Rotary International scholarship. He said the scholarship allows the recipient to study anywhere in the world and that he chose the University of California, Los Angeles.

When he finished his studies there, Amin returned to India, where he was an assistant professor at V.S. Hospital, Gujarat University. After a couple of years, and with the full support of his wife, Amin returned to America to continue his ophthalmologic training at Duke University.

"In 1999, my last year at Duke, the chairman called me in and said, 'We want you to be part of our facility.' It was an honor I'd never dreamt of. But the chairman told me I had to do a one-year specialty fellowship in the discipline of glaucoma."

The fellowship requirement led Amin to California, because he already had a state medical license.

"Five places wanted to hire me, but the only one I liked was Sutter Medical Foundation because they were so very friendly.

"Another reason I picked here was because when I came here, I saw that nice line of trees making a beautifully shaded place along the meridian near the (Yuba City) fountain. I thought: If I take a job here, every day I could eat my lunch where I can see those trees. That sounds bogus and absurd, but those are the reasons.

"They said they were very excited to offer me the job, but it had to be a long-term contract. So I told the chairman at Duke that I was turning down their faculty position and that I was staying here."

In Ethiopia

"In Ethiopia, we have to show how to set up the operating room, how to clean it. We have to show the technician people how to calibrate instruments. We show the surgeons how to do the surgery. We even teach the nurses." He said that they also have to work on the medical machinery because there are so few technicians. "When we go there, we have to be everything."

Amin said it wasn't just the medical side that demonstrated radical differences between America and Ethiopia.

"I've traveled a fair bit, but when I visited Ethiopia, it was a big shock," he said. "One time, I took the doctors and nurses out to dinner, and one nurse asked if she could order ice cream. I said, 'Of course you can order dessert.' Later, the chief ophthalmologist told me the last time he'd had ice cream was about three years ago — this is the main ophthalmologist there who walks to work, who doesn't have a kitchen, who has to use a common kitchen and a common restroom in the complex where he lives.

"People say that when I go over there, I'm helping them, but it's a big learning experience for me, and it helps me appreciate what we have."

Amin's days in Ethiopia are filled with work.

"From the first morning, we start surgeries and do those until sometime in the afternoon." He said they usually do a lot of surgeries quickly to cut the backlog down and then have the local doctors operate.

"In the evening, we do slideshows and work with the ophthalmologists, so they can learn the theory as well as the how and why so they can do the surgeries."

He said that every day, there are more patients than time to treat them. "No one complains at the end of the day if we can't take care of them. They just go away and then the next day, a new line forms."

Honored by Rotary

For his work in Ethiopia, as well as his ongoing efforts to provide financial support and equipment for the clinic there, Amin joins other doctors, a Japanese astronaut, the New Zealand's chief ombudsman, a Harvard professor, the co-inventor of the quantum cascade laser, a health professional fighting AIDS in Africa, a former U.S. ambassador to Mauritius and others from throughout the world as a 2010-2011 Rotary International Service to Humanity Award winner.

To qualify, Rotary International's rules state the award winners "must have provided outstanding service to mankind and achieved the highest degree of distinction in their profession or vocation." The organization's motto is: Service above self.

"Dr. Amin was selected for a number of reasons," said JoAnn Lemmon, past Rotary district governor. "The type of work he does, the way he puts what he's learned to work and the way he shares what he's learned."

Amin will receive the award on Sept. 7.

The future

Amin said that once his two children are through college and his financial demands are less, he would like to expand what he's been doing in Ethiopia to Sudan, where's there's also a tremendous need. "Despite the so-called oil reserves, they don't have the infrastructure to deal with medical care. And at this point in time, without an outside agency that doesn't require money from the locals, little will be done."

CONTACT John Hollis at 749-6552.