Shakhnoza Djuraeva – SOE Educational Grant Placement – Valencian Ophthalmological Hospital, Spain

 

Dear Prof. Marko Hawlina,

I was awarded a SOE Educational Grant for 2015. I chose a hospital and country that I had not visited before: Valencian Ophthalmological Hospital in Spain. I am extremely grateful to Prof.Amparo Tajerina and all the staff at the Hospital for their hospitality and friendliness and warm attitude towards me. I got much more from this trip than I expected!

In addition to Cornea surgery, I had the opportunity to participate in Cataract surgeries performed by many ophthalmologists in the Valencia Hospital and was able to understand different methods of phacoemulsification.

My special thanks to the Cornea specialist, Cristina Peris, for her collegial approach. She never tired of answering all my questions.  Moreover, Cristina gladly introduced me to the culture of her country, especially since it was my first time in Spain.  I met with members of her family and was able to appreciate the wonderful human qualities of the Spanish people from the inside.

I am happy to have received this Grant and I hope that my training in Cornea, where I learned modern kinds of lamellar corneal transplantation such as DMEK, DALK, and a different way of preparing the endothelial transplant, which will benefit not only me, but also my Hospital and patients from my country, who need this type of surgery.  Educational and video material that I brought back from my placement is very interesting to our specialists here.

I would like to thank SOE for the opportunities that the SOE Educational Grant gave me.  We have firmly established professional contacts between Ophthalmologists in Valencia, Antwerp, Dusseldorf, Rome and our Eye Center in Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

We are now planning to invite colleagues from all these Centres to our regional Ophthalmology Conference in 2016.

Thank you very much for this Educational and Teachers Grants programmes which offer great opportunities to ophthalmologists from developing countries.

Best regards,

Dr.Shakhnoza Djuraeva, MD, PhD, Tashkent, Uzbekistan.