Kerry McKluskey
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Jan 24/00) - Baffin residents can take comfort in the fact that the eye technician they'll soon be seeing is not a mirage.

In fact, having a person testing eyes and doing eye-care follow-up is the result of several months of negotiations with health officials in the region.

After the eye-care contract was cancelled by Yellowknife's Stanton Regional Hospital and the last clinic was held last fall, Baffinmuit were left without access to the services regularly provided to them by the travelling eye technicians.

New services were sought, but with the difficulty of staff shortages, a new contract was signed with the Ottawa Eye Institute only recently.

Good news at long last, said Dr. Chuck MacNeil, the director of medical affairs at the Baffin Regional Hospital.

"Eye services have been procured. We're looking at a contract for the first of April," said MacNeil.

Until then, the Ottawa eye technicians will spend their time travelling to Nunavut communities to assess what is and is not available. Their first tour begins today, Jan. 24, in Iqaluit.

"Between now and the end of the fiscal year, they've agreed to send their technicians up and bring their portable equipment and try it out," he said.

"They'll visit our clinics and see what there is to work with as they develop the full program. Hopefully by April 1, a full, regular schedule will be in place serving all of the Baffin communities."

Worth up to about $300,000, the annual contract came just in time, said MacNeil. If people who need serious eye care had been left waiting much longer, the health board -- soon to be replaced by the Department of Health -- would have had to pay to fly those patients south.

"It was beginning to become a real problem. Whether we get our glasses redone a few months earlier or later doesn't matter, but we were reaching a point that people who have eye diseases and needed follow up were going to have to be sent very long distances if we hadn't been able to establish services to the communities," said MacNeil.

And the news gets even better.

In order to compensate for the additional strain and workload placed on the Ottawa Eye Institute, the doctor noted that the eye technicians would be training Northerners to work alongside them.

"That was part of their contract, that they will encourage trainees from the North."