Perth ophthalmologist Bill Morgan has been appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in this year’s King’s Birthday honours, recognising a career of saving vision in people from Australia and Indonesia.
Professor Morgan has worked in the field for more than three decades, after graduating with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery in 1983.
He was quickly drawn to ophthalmology and became a fellow of the Royal Australian College of Ophthalmologists in 1994, attracted to the field from personal experience.
“My grandmother actually went blind from a retinal problem that I suppose influenced me, and then I was given a term of ophthalmology in my second year out as a resident, and I ended up enjoying it very much, partly because of the technology,” he said.
“In those days cataract surgery was just becoming modern and you could see what an improvement it made to people’s lives.
“The surgery was very elegant, and I enjoyed sitting down, basically not too much blood, and you could make a big difference to most people’s lives.”
Professor Morgan said he was pleasantly surprised to be appointed in the honours list.
He said it still did leave him with a few questions.
“I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, I thought, ‘oh that’s nice, someone’s obviously kindly nominated me’, and it’s very kind of them,” he said.
“(I was wondering) two things, I was wondering who had possibly nominated me, and also what for in particular.”
Professor Morgan has been recognised for his “distinguished service to ophthalmology, to neuro-ophthalmic physiology, to space medicine and health, and to tertiary education”.
Having worked at the Lions Eye Eye Institute since 1994, he was its managing director from 2019 to 2024.
He also teaches at a number of universities and is a consultant ophthalmologist at both Royal Perth Hospital and Perth Children’s Hospital.
His work has taken him far from Perth, helping treat trachoma in central desert Indigenous communities.
One of his most enduring works has been his efforts in Indonesia through the Institute, where he has travelled almost annually since 1994 to help treat eye issues and teach local doctors about glaucoma.
Professor Morgan says his first trip to Indonesia particularly sticks with him, when he was asked to see a patient on the way to sightsee at a volcano.
He came across a child whose eyes were completely opaque due to a glaucoma.
He said it inspired him to specialise in combating the disease in the region.
“We drove up this mountain, I think it was Kintamani, and there was a village there, and there was a lady with a little pram, she was basically waiting in the village, and I had a look at this baby, and you can see the eyes are just totally opaque,” he said.
“The baby was only about three months old, something like that, and they asked if there was anything I could do, but unfortunately, when the eyes are like that, there’s nothing you can do.
“That was what really got me interested in trying to help solve the problem up there, I’d never seen such a bad case, that really stuck in my mind.”
He has since co-designed a glaucoma drainage device with an Indonesian ophthalmologist, which prevents around 90 per cent of patients from going blind.
The trips also served as a chance to impart knowledge on local doctors and has seen an explosion in the number of people who can treat glaucoma in Indonesia.
Having improved countless lives in Australia and Indonesia, one of Professor Morgan’s next endeavours is to help astronauts in space.
He is part of a team developing a handheld machine to measure intracranial pressure through scanning the back of the eye, a process which is hoped to reduce the need for invasive lumbar punctures.
The machine is about to be trialled first at Royal Perth Hospital and allows patients to be sitting or lying down, allowing for more flexibility compared to the previous large machine likened to a “German tank” by Professor Morgan.
It is then hoped to address one of the key health concerns facing astronauts, increased intracranial pressure.
To test the device, Professor Morgan will go on a zero-gravity flight, which travels in an arc, allowing passengers to simulate weightlessness as felt in space.
He said development on the machine was ongoing but there was interest from multiple space agencies.
“We are making another version of this, making it even smaller to test in ICU and then we’ll use that version also on the parabolic flight experiments,” he said.
“Then once we’ve shown that it can work and do the right thing, we’ve been speaking with NASA and also ESA (European Space Agency) and they’re very interested in the results that we’ll get.”
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