Dr. Justin Mora on living your best life through eye care

The following is the 'An Eye for Eyes' article featured in North & South Magazine (May 2024).

It’s a long haul to become an ophthalmologist: five years at medical school, two years as a specialist and three as a surgeon. Nonetheless, Justin Mora knew he wanted to be an eye surgeon from just thirteen-years-old.

Family lore has him making this claim, although he had no idea why it was to be his destiny, only that he wanted “to help people see”. Twenty-two years since graduating, Mora is a senior ophthalmologist at Auckland Eye, and finds immense satisfaction in his work. For him and his colleagues, it’s about more than just fixing eyesight — it’s about improving lives.

One of Mora’s memorable experiences treating a patient was when a 70-year-old man attended Auckland Eye with a foreign object in his eye. Mora noticed he had a cataract in his other eye. “You learn to see as a child” says Mora “and the man was adamant that this injury was straight after his 8th birthday. We talked about it and decided to take the cataract out of this eye which had not seen for 62 years. The day after he took his pad off he had 20/20 vision.” It’s experiences like these that keep Mora’s spirits high.

Auckland Eye was founded by four doctors in 1993, and now employs 18 ophthalmologists across their multiple locations. Aotearoa has only 160 ophthalmologists, so that represents a fair chunk of the specialists.

In the realm of treatment options, innovation reigns supreme. They have recently updated their laser equipment worth millions of dollars.

Mora says awareness about the importance of eye health is high in NZ, although knowledge about associated diseases (e.g. macular degeneration) is low. The myopia epidemic has become a major cause of concern for ophthalmologists world wide. In Singapore, for instance, 95 per cent of young people are leaving school with nearsightedness. While Mora says lifestyle factors play a significant role in its escalation — excessive screen time, close reading and other near-vision efforts — it’s also the absence of natural sunlight that has been recognised as being one of the main causes.

Suddenly the call to go outside and play is more salutary than just getting the kids off the couch.

As for adults, concentrated work, like reading or staring at screens, can lead to dry eyes due to decreased blinking. For every hour in front of a device it’s recommended you have half an hour away, ideally outside.

It has always been through the eye that a variety of conditions are detected. “Even simple things like hypertension’ says Mora, “we see change in the blood vessels in the eyes before its registered in the rest of the body.”