Mr. Horm Piseth, Member
Mr. Horm Piseth is an optometrist, National Refraction Trainer at the National Refraction Training Center (NRTC) of the National Program for Eye Health, Ministry of Health, currently works as country program manager for the Eye Care Foundation (ECF), Cambodia.
Mr. Piseth graduated as medical assistance in 1993, he continued studies in optometry from 1993-1996, the first batch of optometry student supported training by Southeast Asia Outreach (SAO) organization base in the United Kingdom.
After graduation he set up the Cambodian Optometry Association in 1997, worked as a local NGO to generate the optometry clinic, designed projects for community outreach refraction screening to provide glasses for the people at communities across the country. At the same time, he took his effort to set up a refraction training center to deliver refraction course to the government eye health personnel in refraction and spectacle dispensing, as a result, a total of 19 optometric technicians were trained between1997 and 2007.
In 2007 he moved to work for The Fred Hollows Foundation. He is a founder of the National Refraction Training project phase I (2008-2012) and set up a National Refraction Training Centre (NRTC) under the umbrella of the National Program for Eye Health of Ministry of Health, the project in Phase II continued (2013-2017) as a result, a total of 157 refractionists trained through the project period. He also actively involves in the technical committee to develop a refraction training curriculum, training schedule and to oversee the quality of training, train new national refraction trainers.
Mr. Piseth is very passionate in his work as an optometrist in the country. He is a strong advocate of optometrist in performing primary eye care. He is actively involved in the Optometrist Society of Cambodia and together with like-minded optometrists/refractionists, they strive to improve and promote the professionalism to increase the clinical job scope of optometrist/refractionist in Cambodia.
He works closely with the National Program for Eye Health and the University of Health Sciences, National and Sub-national partners, NGOs to design and develop eye health care projects. His focus is to support the country strategic plans and policies on blindness prevention and control to elimination of avoidable blindness in Cambodia.
Mr. Piseth is a founder of the Optometrist Society of Cambodia in 2008 and he was elected as the first president of the society in 2008-2011. He worked for The Fred Hollows Foundation Cambodia from 2007-2018 to coordinate National Refraction Training Project, deliver refraction training courses, conducted clinical low vision assessment to provide low vision services to children in schools for the blind in Cambodia.