Clinic’s long delays could have cost vision

The mother of a young boy waited eight long months to discover her son had a serious eye condition needing urgent treatment.

‘I had no idea he was partially blind’ ... Margaret Russell with children Richard, 3, Lillian, 4, and Lucy-May, 6 months. Picture: Hollie Adams

Margaret Russell’s son Richard was just 18 months old when she took him to the Sydney Children’s Hospital at Randwick for an illness related to his lack of adrenal glands.

It was then that doctors noticed he had a lazy eye, and referred him to the Lion’s Eye Clinic for Children, connected to the hospital.

“I had no idea he was partially blind at that stage,” Ms Russell told The Australian.

Richard was put on the clinic’s long waiting list without the severity of his condition being explained to her.

After eight months, Ms Russell contacted the Children’s Hospital to ask them to “chase up” his appointment referral.

She said because the referral had been dealt with so slowly, she didn’t think it was urgent.

It was only after an appointment was swiftly organised (ahead of her position on the wait list) that she learned her son needed urgent treatment to avoid becoming legally blind in one eye.

Ms Russell was told by paediatric ophthalmologist Kimberley Tan that the eye would “would never get better” but that urgent treatment was necessary to prevent it getting worse.

“The sooner the doctor could get on to treating and strengthening the wandering eye, the better the chance of retaining the sight in it,” she said.

Richard was prescribed glasses and told he would require six-monthly appointments to train and strengthen his eye.

Now aged three, Richard made the now regular trip from his family’s home in Engadine in Sydney’s south to the clinic in Randwick yesterday.

It took Ms Russell about two hours to make the drive in peak morning traffic, having to also bring her six-month-old daughter, Lucy-May, on the trip.

“It’s so far away but it’s the only one that bulk-bills, and they know Richard there now.”

After arriving at 10am, it took two hours before Richard was seen, delays Ms Russell said she had come to expect. She said the long waiting lists were a concern because children were unable to communicate issues such as eyesight problems and other pain.