{"product_id":"fred-hollows-an-autobiography-by-fred-hollows-with-peter-corris","title":"Fred Hollows: An Autobiography by Fred Hollows with Peter Corris","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen there is work to do, Fred Hollows is in a hurry.\u003cbr\u003e   He's no saint, doesn't pretend to be one. In fact, he's as rough a diamond as they come. Tom Kenneally called him 'the wild colonial boy of Australian surgery' and there are plenty of bureaucrats, mean minds, too-hard merchants, time-servers and authoritarians who know what Keneally means by that. For the likes of Fred Hollows the world isn't up to scratch while 3.5 million Africans go blind each year, avoidably for the most part. You don't talk about it, there are quite enough bemoaners around. You get stuck in and fix it.\u003cbr\u003e   A bit of energy, money, training and a plastic lens factory was needed, so he got busy, met the people on the spot, showed them what to do, raised a few bob and is bloody well going to give Africans the means to look after themselves. As soon as possible. The Hollows approach tends to cut these big, daunting problems down to size. \u003cbr\u003e   The 'roads' Fred Hollows travelled in Eritrea were bumpy, rocky and uncomfortable. The operating theatre he worked in was in a cave. MiG jets overhead didn't help matters either. Clinics were held in dry creek beds. But he mended people's sight, got to know the problems, learnt from the clever and resourceful Eritrean people, and figured it out. The next step took him to corporate boardrooms, television studios, lecterns, political offices and to setting this account of his life.\u003cbr\u003e   Australian of the Year and Humanist of the Year, Professor Fred C Hollows AC was born in New Zealand and grew up in a tolerant Christian socialist family. He entered medical school after he discovered he wasn't cut out to be a clergyman. He became an alpine guide, an orderly in a psychiiatric hospital, a bulldozer driver; sank bores in the backblocks of Queensland and decided to become an 'eye doctor', a trade he describes as 'good work'.\u003cbr\u003e   Post-graduate work among Welsh mining families gave him a practical, professional, compassionate and ethical basis for his work.\u003cbr\u003e   So when happenstance took him to Watti Creek and he discovered just how appalling eye health was among Aborigines in the Outback, he was prepared. First, he got angry: ' Third World stuff . . .', 'nineteenth century . . . ' he told a shocked Australia. Then he got stuck in. Two years and a quarter of a million kilometers later, the Trachoma Program had fixed the worst of the problem, bringing eye health care to over 100,000 rural Aborigines. He inspired colleagues to join him. He fended off political obstacles. He dispensed spectacles, 10,000 pairs of them. Sometimes Program workers literally restored sight to the blind.\u003cbr\u003e   When Fred Hollows gets busy, conflict is inevitable, some sensibilities may get bruised, hindrances must be overcome, waffle gets dismissed, and wasted time is not tolerated. But the patient, whoever, wherever, he or she may be, \u003cem\u003ewill\u003c\/em\u003e see the doctor.\u003cbr\u003e   \u003cem\u003eFred Hollows: an autobiography \u003c\/em\u003ereplenishes one's sense of what is possible.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Hollows, Fred","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover:","offer_id":43733933031510,"sku":null,"price":8.5,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/2350\/4982\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_778b9479-2562-4a76-9686-cd51bc1d8653.jpg?v=1767874364","url":"https:\/\/www.secondhandpages.com.au\/products\/fred-hollows-an-autobiography-by-fred-hollows-with-peter-corris","provider":"Secondhand Pages ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}