A hands-on Ophthalmic Equipment Maintenance Course is helping eye care workers across Papua New Guinea strengthen their skills to maintain essential equipment — ensuring the care they provide remains reliable and sustainable.
Delivered by biomedical engineers from the Aravind Eye Care System, the course focuses on practical, hands-on learning. Participants build skills in equipment handling, preventative maintenance, calibration, and troubleshooting common faults — both in clinics and in the field.
This practical approach helps build confidence to carry out repairs independently and reduce equipment downtime, ensuring services can continue without disruption.
Held in March in Port Moresby and Madang, the training brought together a diverse group of eye care workers, including ophthalmologists, ophthalmic clinicians, and biomedical engineers from Provincial Health Authorities, the National Department of Health, and partner organisations such as PNG Eye Care and Meddent.
Participants shared that the training filled important gaps in their knowledge, particularly around maintaining and calibrating equipment after installation. It also strengthened their confidence to care for the tools they rely on every day.
By strengthening the capacity of both clinicians and biomedical engineers, the training supports more reliable and sustainable eye care services across the country. It also builds a network of skilled professionals who can support equipment maintenance across provinces.
We are grateful to our partner Sir Brian Bell Foundation, whose support helped make this course possible. By including Meddent biomedical engineers in this training, they are helping strengthen not just local skills and capacity, but the systems that underpin quality eye care. Beyond funding, they are helping to create lasting change.
This training builds on similar work delivered in Fiji in 2024 and is part of The Foundation’s ongoing efforts to strengthen local skills and capacity — ensuring the systems behind eye care are as strong as the services themselves.
