Seva Canada: A Solution in Sight

Carrying on the photography theme, we want to spread the word about the work of Dr. Larry Louie.

Dr. Louie is an international award-winning photographer and Edmonton optometrist who, like Marco Antonio Cruz, is using his powerful images to raise awareness of the issue of global blindness.

The 20 Dioptor Lens: A local doctor doing an examination. Copyright Larry Louie

In September 2008, Larry and his wife Joanna Wong, travelled to Tanzania to see the work being done by Seva Canada’s partner, the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology headed by Drs. Paul Courtright and Susan Lewallen.

To view a slideshow of Larry’s eye care images from Tanzania, click http://www.socialdocumentary.net//LarryLouie or visit Larry’s website at http://www.larrylouie.com/

Yesterday I saw this amazing photograph in The Globe and Mail of a poor Mexican woman farmer, blind from cataracts. If this woman had access to a 15-minute cataract surgery costing about $50, she could see again. This cost is based on the 7 countries where Seva Canada works to prevent blindness and restore sight.

Andrea Islas Garcia, farmer, blind from cataracts, Beunavista 1998. Copyright Marco A. Cruz

This photograph was taken by Mexican photographer, Marco Antonio Cruz, and is one of a series he has taken of blind people.

Marco A. Cruz’s work is on the short list for the Grange Prize, a $50,000 award given by the Art Gallery of Ontario, with Aeroplan as a partner. Of the 4 finalists, the winner will be chosen through online voting on the website.

Click here to see this stunning series.

There are 45 million blind people in the world, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Eighty per cent of this blindness is either preventable or treatable. In a word of seemingly unsolvable problems, there is a quick fix and cataract surgery is it.

Looking at these images, I feel intensely grateful for my own eyesight and for my work at Seva Canada helping the blind see again.

I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted at the Kathmandu airport by Parami Dhakhwa, Seva Nepal Program Coordinator, who whisked me away to the Seva office to meet Shravan Kumar Chaudhari, Finance Manager.  Due to some logistical constraints, Shravan had arranged for me to travel south by Lumbini Eye Institute (LEI) vehicle from Kathmandu in order to meet up with Ram Prasad Kandel, Seva’s Program Manager.

Kandel has proved to be a consummate host, and I am greeted warmly wherever we go.  En route to meeting Kandel, I briefly toured Bharatpur Eye Hospital the evening I arrived in Chitwan District.  The next day proved to be rather interesting.  Due to a bandh (strike) because of student elections, the LEI vehicle could not take me to Butwal.  Instead, I took a rather crowded public bus (I was lucky to have a seat!) to Butwal.

From there, Kandel and I went to Tansen, where the Palpa Lions Lacoul Eye Hospital was conducting a three-day surgical and screening camp.  With the exception of a minimal registration fee, all services were provided free of cost to the blind and visually impaired patients who filled the rooms and lined the hallways.

I met Dr. Salma KC, the eye hospital’s resident ophthalmologist, in the operating room, where she was performing one of many cataract surgeries that she would do that day.  Dr. Salma will be going to Vancouver soon for a pediatric ophthalmology fellowship.  Her specialized skills are much needed in a country of 29 million, where there are currently only three pediatric opthalmologists.

Dr Salma, one of 3 pediatric ophthalmologists in Nepal

The following day, we took a rather bumpy and hair-raising ride northwest to Gulmi District to observe a school screening.  All students with anything less than normal vision will be fitted and provided with eyeglasses.  Refractive error is especially prevalent in Asian countries such as Nepal, and by identifying children in schools, the Primary Eye Care Centre (PECC) in Gulmi is reaching children who may not otherwise come to the center for glasses.  They are also detecting eye conditions that can be prevented or treated before the affected children go blind. At the same time, this outreach will result in increased awareness among the community about the eye care services available. The children will go home and tell their families about the eye screening at school and the whole community will benefit.

The Primary Eye Care Centre itself is very well run under the capable and inspired leadership of Chairman Bharat Bahadur Chand, who proved to be an incredibly generous host: he invited us to his home for dinner and provided me with a very comfortable room to sleep for the night.  We also managed to squeeze in a quick trip to the Hindu temple of Yagyashala at the top of Resunga Peak.

On our return ride to Bhairawa, home of Lumbini Eye Institute (LEI), I got to hear one of Seva’s radio messages advertising free cataract surgery for children at LEI.  Although I do not understand Nepali, my ears perked up with I heard mention of Seva.  We also stopped by Butwal Lions Eye Care Hospital, which is quite an impressive facility with much space to expand.

I look forward to seeing the services at LEI today and tomorrow.  I have already met Sanjeeb Adhikari, Seva’s Child Blindness Coordinator, and hope to meet Dr. Karthikeyan, one of LEI’s two resident pediatric opthalmologists, soon.

I am both inspired and humbled by the dedicated staff and partners I have met.  Seva really is carrying out its mission of serving those most in need with high quality, affordable, and accessible eye care and truly embodies compassion in action.

Amanda Marr

Susan Erdmann writes from Nepal:

With all the thoughts and anticipation, nothing prepared us for the reception at the eye camp in Gulmi.

Behind the gates to the school where they has set up the eye camp, a crowd was waiting. Being one of the first through the gates, I was presented with one flower garland after another, most of them made out of local flowers or greens. One old woman placed a garland over my head that she had carefully made from little bits of evergreen. It was one of the most touching moments I have ever had, save the gratitude expressed by the Tibetans.

The entry into the eye camp for everyone was so moving that anything that happened after after paled in comparison.  The townspeople
were so happy, deeply grateful  and excited that we would even make the long journey (if they had any perception of what that meant) for what was happening for them;  the only way for them to express it was through their handmade garlands , ‘Namastes’ and smiles.  I was crying by the end of the line to the door as was Maureen and I am sure everyone else.  It was so moving and so worth the long arduous journey to get there.

Just the greeting, the welcoming had such a impact that the rest of what happened couldn’t come close to the impact of  the entry.  We were shown where the people were screened , eyes tested for glasses and those checked for cataract. They would continue the eye camp until everyone was looked after, and it was projected to last for 3 days.

Dr. Salma was doing all the surgery and a few of the group went in to the room designated for operating to  view her at work.  As we anticipated, going to Lumbini and we didn’t have a lot of time, not everyone who wanted to see surgery got to, but those that did were overwhelmed, not only by her deft skills but the speed at which she removed the cataracts.

Outside the building where the checking and operations took place was a area where people were being checked for general eye sight with a
chart at one end and a little stool at the other. One by one, people would sit down and a woman from the eye team would stand behind and hold one hand over the person’s one eye and then the other while her colleague pointed to the eye chart. Those who passed moved on, while those who did not went to have further tests and perhaps receive eye glasses.

One young woman we came upon as I was walking to the camp said she had an eye that weeped all the time and was instructed to return the next day to have it checked and hopefully fixed.  I am sure that everyone in the village and surrounding area was there. What a thrill.  I said to Kandel…this is really remote and he replied that despite the difficult journey in, this was not nearly remote as some eye camps.  I can’t imagine.

The following video of a Seva eye camp in Pyuthan, Nepal will give you a sense of what a Seva eye camp is like.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz0yREq0N4M&hl=en&fs=1]

Seva Foundation’s Sight Program Director is Dr. Chundak Tenzing, a Tibetan ophthalmologist from Nepal, who lives and breathes Seva’s mission of restoring sight and preventing blindness. Anyone who has ever met Chundak cannot help but be impressed by his caring nature and his deep compassion.

Chundak is also a poet. He sent the following message and poem for Seva Canada’s blog:

I am sharing with you
Voices from the field
Where the blind
Receive sight restoration
And walk unassisted
To live a life
With  dignity

When a heart opens its petals
Like a blooming flower
And hands deliver
A gift of sight

The expression of gratitude
Rolls down a cheek
Like dewdrops
Glistening in the sunshine

To wonder and say
What a journey
It is to be giving
And receiving
Happiness
In its purest form
With no strings attached

grateful Seva patients young and old

Let’s face it — everyone loves Dr. Spencer.

Marty has been a Seva board member for over 20 years and is a respected and much-loved ophthalmologist on Vancouver Island. He has both performed surgery and trained eye care specialists in India, Nepal, Tibet, Malawi and Guatemala. He was one of the first doctors in the world to travel to India, Nepal and Tibet to set up eye camps in remote areas.

As a volunteer, he receives no funds and pays for the trips himself. He has voluntarily operated on thousands of cataract patients, transforming their lives by restoring their sight.

In February 2009, Dr. Spencer travelled to Nepal and Cambodia to train eye doctors and to perform surgeries. His youngest daughter, Justine, accompanied him and said it was amazing to see the reception that her father received.  She said it was like her dad was going home again; everywhere Marty was welcomed with open arms.

We could go on and on about how wonderful Marty is (especially since we have the password to the blog and he doesn’t!), but instead we’ll share some of his excellent photos that he took in February in Nepal.

Click here to view a slideshow of Dr. Spencer’s photos of Seva’s sight programs in Nepal:

slideshow of Dr. Martin Spencer’s photos of Seva’s sight programs in Nepal

Who knew that little bits of plastic windshield embedded in people’s eyes could turn out to be a good thing?

Sir Harold Ridley, a British ophthalmologist, saw WWII pilots who had pieces of shattered windshields in their eyes and noticed that the plastic shards were inert. He performed the first cataract surgery with an intraocular lens (IOL) in 1949. IOLs are human-made lenses that are used to replace clouded natural lenses in cataract surgery.

The first lenses used were made of glass, they were heavy and were prone to shatter; Sir Harold’s observation led to the use of plastic materials.

For decades, cataract surgery using intraocular lenses was out of reach for the developing world, because of the cost of the lenses. Patients who had cataract surgeries in poor countries were forced to wear thick, cumbersome glasses which, if lost or broken, meant they returned to near blindness.

Seva Foundation board member, David Green, is another visionary. He says if you truly want to serve as many people as possible, analyze the most expensive item involved and then figure out how much it really costs to make. Start making it more affordably. Repeat.

The solution was to do a technology transfer to India, with the help of Seva Canada and CIDA, so that IOLs could be made at a tiny fraction of the cost in the West. Thus Aurolab was born in 1992 and has since supplied more than 5 million lenses to its customers in India and more than 120 other countries worldwide. The cost of IOLs came down from over $300 to about $5 each.

Good news!

This Nepali woman was seen at a recent Seva eye camp in Doti. Notice her broken glasses and mature cataract.

Amanda Marr from our sister organization, Seva Foundation, writes about the great work being done by Seva Cambodia:

After a three-hour drive from Siem Reap province, Roshelle, the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) Child Blindness Project Manager, and I arrived yesterday in the  province of Battambang, where Seva Cambodia’s office is located.  I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time Dr. Bal Kumar KC (“Dr. KC”),  Seva Cambodia’s technical advisor and ophthalmologist, and Diro, the Child Blindness Coordinator, as well as seeing Ratana, Seva Cambodia’s Program Manager, again.  Today was a full day, starting early in the morning when Battambang Ophthalmic Care Center (BOCC) opened to tour the facility and meet the staff.

Eye Unit at Battambang Referral Hospital

We then toured the nearby Eye Unit at the government-run Battambang Referral Hospital. One ophthalmologist is stationed there, along with a refractionist who also does school screenings when he is not working at the Eye Unit.

Upon returning to BOCC, we met a 5-year-old girl who came for her first follow-up visit after having her second cataract removed during the recent eye camp in Banteay Manchey.  Her story was featured in the recent Seva Canada newsletter. (http://www.seva.ca/newsletter.htm)  Life for both her and her family has improved drastically: her mother can now work in the fields while her older sister takes care of her, and she is now much more engaged with her surroundings.

Then it was off to a remote district about an hour away, where a BOCC outreach worker had gathered the community at the nearby pagoda (temple) to be examined by Dr. KC.  Along the way, we picked up a woman with ptosis (drooping eyelid) whom Dr. KC had operated on.  Her son also has ptosis but is too young for the operation.  We drove to her father’s house, where 3 of her siblings had been operated on for the same condition.  They are doing well, and the other 2 siblings with ptosis plan to go to BOCC to get the operation in May.

Buddhist monk having his eyes examined by Seva

At the pagoda, Dr. KC identified patients with several different eye conditions, including a number of elderly people with cataracts and one woman with pterygium, a fleshy growth in the eye that can eventually lead to blindness.  We filled the van with these patients and drove back to BOCC, where they received surgery.

Within one hour, we witnessed 4 cataract surgeries, all of them elderly women, conducted by BOCC’s resident ophthalmologist, Dr. Heng Ton, who was trained by Seva in Nepal at partner institution Lumbini Eye Institute.

Screening schoolchildren in Cambodia www.seva.ca

Later in the afternoon, we drove to a school screening, where the eye unit refractionist was determining the strength of lenses needed by children with low vision who’d been identified by their teachers.   They will receive custom-made glasses within the next few weeks, allowing them to see the blackboard, read, and hopefully excel in school.

We are returning to Siem Reap tomorrow, when we will tour Angkor Hospital for Children, another one of Seva’s important partners in Cambodia, before I take off for Nepal.

This has been a wonderful opportunity to witness the great work being done by Seva Cambodia.

Amanda Marr
Seva Foundation Sight Project Manager

We have just completed three days in the mid hills of Nepal under the shadow or the Annapurna range. Breathtaking views in the early morning, but there many forest fires that have been burning for a while. This is because of the six-month drought.

We are in Pokra in a lovely Hotel in the middle of the lake. We have lost a few pounds after taking a showering off all the dust we which we collected from not having running water for three days. It is a lovely spot.

We were witness to a remote eye camp in Gulmi where we were treated like royals. Our arrival stirred celebrations in the town and we were greeted with flower garlands, tea and our own security. The whole town was out for this event. There were hundreds of people, young and old, who had travelled for miles to have their eyes checked. We also had the opportunity to witness a cataract surgery performed by Dr Salma, who will be coming to Vancouver in June for her fellowship at UBC.

All the equipment was powered by generators as there are severe power cuts all day. Our trip to Lumbini was changed due to 11 days of strikes in the southern part on the Indian border. There many political issues and it was felt that it would safer to avoid this part of the trip, as we may get stuck with no road or air access out.

The people of Nepal have been wonderful, kind and really friendly. In the morning, we will head back on a flight to Kathmandu for a cultural tour of some of the historic sites and some culture. So far we have loved every moment of our experience of this trip.

Nagib

Last evening’s Seva benefit at Chai Gallery restaurant in Vancouver was a great success. Not only did it raise $557.25 for Seva’s sight programs, but everyone had a terrific time. Thank you Mustafa, Zamir, all the musicians, staff, cooks and attendees!

It was great to have a chance to chat with people about Seva’s work in the developing world. The atmosphere at Chai is really special and, if you haven’t experienced it yet, check it out. The second Wednesday of each month is a benefit for Seva. Doors open at 7 pm and the cost is $35, of which $10 is a donation to Seva. The buffet dinner is delicious and the all-evening musical performances are brilliant.

One of my favourite parts of the evening was talking to two British tourists who had somehow stumbled upon Chai Gallery. They looked a bit mystified when they came in at 7, but by 9 pm they were having such a fun time that one of them was saying he was going to move to Vancouver from Manchester. When I left at midnight, they were still there, laughing, taking photos and clapping to the music.

Mark your calendars for Wednesday April 8th for the next Seva benefit at Chai Gallery!

Heather

Tibet has the highest rate of blindness in the world.  Most of this blindness is due to cataract. For $50 Cdn, a 15-minute cataract surgery can restore sight and completely change people’s lives.

Seva has been working in Tibet since 1995 and is the leading eye-care provider, responsible for two-thirds of the cataract surgeries in both the Tibetan Autonomous region and in Tibetan areas outside the TAR.

In the Tibet Autonomous Region, Seva works in:
•    Lhasa, through Menzikhang (we’ve set up a tertiary eye care program there with Tibetan eye specialists)
•    Chamdo
•    Nyiri
•    Ngari in the far northwest
In Amdo:
•    Yushu
In Kham:
•    Dartsedo, where we are establishing the Kham Eye Centre
•    Ngaba
•    Liangsham

Each year Seva runs up to 25 mobile eye camps and each camp serves between 300 and 400 people and does up to 300 sight-restoring cataract surgeries.

To learn more about how you can help Seva help Tibet, visit http://www.seva.ca.

Beginning March 11, the second Wednesday of every month will be a Seva benefit evening at the Chai Gallery, a Silk Route-inspired serving sumptuous Eastern banquets.

Located at 3239 West Broadway, between Trutch and Blenheim, Chai Gallery is Vancouver’s hottest world fusion venue, where food, music, dance and people of the world come together and celebrate.

This weekly fundraiser features some of Vancouver’s best known performers of world dance and music, featuring Gypsy, Flamenco, Indian, Afro-Latin and Persian music and salsa.

Weekends at Chai start on a Wednesday night. This is Chai’s popular event and it’s been going strong for three years, and now it’s supporting Seva. If you haven’t been to a Wednesday night, or have friends from out of town, this event is not to be missed.

Chai Gallery’s owner, Mustafa Nahib, has says he owes his life to nonprofits like Seva. Mustafa and his family were forced to escape from Afghanistan when he was just five and he grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan and India. “I really admire the work Seva does, especially for children. If the eyes are the windows of the soul then Seva has opened many souls to the world, and the world to their souls,” says Mustafa.

Wednesday evenings at Chai are very popular. To make a reservation call Chai at 604-734-5881. Mark your calendar for the second Wednesday of each month and come and say hello.

Last summer, a Seva Canada donor funded three eye camps in remote hill districts of Nepal. The first of the three camps took place in Khandbari in December 2008. To view a series of images from Seva of the eye camp, click on this link:

Seva-sponsored eye camp in Khandbari, Nepal in December 2008

In the next couple of days, our donors who are travelling in Nepal will get to see an eye camp in Gulmi. Watch this space for some of their images and impressions.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Wanda writes:

We were up in darkness to prepare for the departure 160km west to Pokhara by flight.  The power cuts in Kathmandu are amazing in the sense that people are living with just four hours of electricity each day.  Fortunately, the hotel we stayed in has a generator, but they were not going to turn it on just for the group, so we did everything by candlelight which was romantic and a gentle way to start the day.

We were at the domestic airport in plenty of time, although the flight was delayed by an hour and a half.  Had an incredible flight with the full march of the Himalaya to our north… Very lucky indeed with the weather and the views.

Just having a quick stop in Pokhara before heading to Begnas Lake where we will enjoy some village culture for three days.

The blog is going to be stop and start for a few days depending on where we have access to computers and internet.

Over and out from 25c in central Nepal.

Wanda

and Susan adds:

We are now in Pokara, for a rest, lots of massages and, for some of the group, walking and for others sitting and thinking about how unbelievable it is that we are all there, safely and happily, and how lucky we are to share this already amazing experience. Who needs electricity all the time or good  working toilets?… Life is an adventure.

Susan