Seva Canada: A Solution in Sight

On Friday June 4th, over one hundred women golfers teed off to raise funds to restore sight to women and girls in Africa.

The Marine Drive Ladies Golf Tournament, organized by Diane Hardouin, was a resounding success and raised $15,700 to provide eye care through Seva’s programs in Tanzania.

Our thanks to Diane Hardouin for her months of hard work and to her fellow committee members, Esther Adamson, Dianne Cook, Sue Biddle, Naz Remtulla, Louise Forsythe, Lynn Neilsen, Carolyn Butt, Margaret Gillis and Michele Holwill. Kudos to David Hardouin and his hardworking  group of guys; Tim Tait and his great team of professionals; Wade Hawksworth and his links crew; Haymond Ng and the clubhouse staff; and Ron Pauls and the office personnel. Special thanks to Kara Koszman, and a huge thank-you to Michele Greatrex for her undying support and optimism.

Our thanks also to all the golfers and to these generous donors:

Esther Adamson
Marj Allen-Balance Group, Macdonald Realty
Mayzelle Allen
Susan Biddle
Joanne Brydon
Lynn Buntain, Buntain Insurance
Carolyn Butt
Canaccord Wealth Management
Tosh Chu
Judy Clarke
Dianne Cook
Rose Chung
David Hunter Garden Centres
Teri Dwane
Dynamic Funds
Deb Faurot, Unique Gift Baskets
Rosemarie Gallagher
Haida Forest Products
Scott Hall, Hall Wealth Management
Michele Holwill and Ken Labron, Assante
Dave Mills, Hub International TOS Limited
Picton Mahoney Asset Management
Al and Naz Remtulla
Riverside Golf Centre
Sentry Select Capital
Linda Sung
Lorraine Sung
Tim Taint, T2 Development Inc.
Tradewinds Consulting & EDRT Environmental Response
Bryan Uyesugi, Freshpoint
Peeyush Varshney
Nosh and Nina Vellani
Vertexone
Barb Whidden
Alan Wong

World Sight Day is around the corner and here at Seva Canada we have a host of local and national events aimed at raising awareness of blindness among girls and women. Our national video contest, Her Sight Is Worth It (www.hersight.ca), has been featured in Canadian Teacher magazine and the BC Teacher’s Federation newsletter.

The idea is simple: create a 3-minute video on the topic of gender and blindness. Winners will be featured in the World Community Film Festival in 8 locations across Canada starting in January 2010.  First prize is a MacBook computer, second prize is a Flip video camera and all three winners will have the sight restored to a woman and a girl in their names.

On World Sight Day itself, Seva Canada is having a party. Two hundred people will be attending Seva’s Eye Opener Benefit in Vancouver, featuring a 9-piece R&B dance band, a silent auction, door prizes and our special guest, Dr. Paul Courtright, the world expert on gender and blindness. Dr. Courtright arrives this evening in Vancouver and will be in Canada until October 11, where he’ll be meeting with government representatives in Ottawa and Vancouver and doing media interviews about his work in Africa with the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology and the barriers that women and girls face in accessing eye care.

Seva Canada is using World Sight Day as a launching pad for a year-long campaign to raise awareness about the 30 million women and girls who are blind. That is a staggering number… almost the population of Canada. It’s been said before that people don’t go blind by the millions, but one personal tragedy at a time. Here’s a story we just got from the amazing team at Seva Tibet about one of those 30 million tragedies…

Chime Dolkar, blind from bilateral cataracts, has spent the last two years barely surviving by begging on the streets of Nakchu, nomadic town at an elevation of 4500 meters in northern Tibet. Since the age of 4, her little daughter Tashi has led her blind mother by the right hand through the streets, trying to get enough food to keep them both from starving. At night, they would crawl into a small and nearly worn-out tent stationed near a bridge in the upper town.

There were times Tashi, now 6, begged by herself, telling her mother to rest in the tent. Several weeks ago, Tashi was begging on the street where the Civil Affairs office was located when an official, who was aware Chime’s blindness, told the little girl that a Seva medical team from Lhasa would be doing free surgeries for the blind and would be arriving in one week. He encouraged Tashi to talk her mother for treatment.

Tashi ran back to the tent with the great news. Chime reacted rather indifferently from hearing it and responded, “Surgery? Why would I want that? I am destined to become blind. It’s better for me to comply with my fate.” Poor Tashi didn’t really understand that much about destiny, fate and all that complicated hypothesis, and disagreed with her mom by saying, “Nothing is fixed. If you keep trying to change things for the better, what you call ‘fate’ will be different. Why don’t you try the surgery? It’s free. Please give it try, mom, please!”

Chime agreed, counting off the days until the Seva-funded medical team’s arrival. As each day passed, their excitement escalated. When the medical team arrived they diagnosed Chime with bilateral cataracts and on the first day of the camp Chime’s had cataract surgery on her left eye. Later, on the third day, she had surgery on her right eye.

Nothing in her 48 years of life had so transformed Chime’s life as listening to her daughter’s advice and regaining her sight through surgeries. Until then, Chime said that her life was “totally meaningless and a failure”. The sight-restoration surgery has given Chime new hope and confidence. She is anxious to re-plan both her and Tashi’s life. No longer forced to beg, Chime is planning on asking the local government for a job at the Nakchu train station. Smiling, she says, “I will be very happy if I can work at the railway station…I can work as a garbage cleaner or security guard.” She gazes at Tashi and continues, “Tashi should be going to first grade of elementary school. Wow, life is not that bad after all!”

Her sight IS worth it.

Thursday October 8th is World Sight Day and Seva Canada is planning a range of events to mark the occasion. This year’s theme for World Sight Day is gender and eye health.

Here are the facts:
1. Two-thirds of the world’s 45 million blind people are women & girls.
2. In many countries, men’s access to eye care is twice that of women.
3. Effective strategies can and do successfully address this inequity.

Seva is a global leader in understanding and addressing the barriers to eye care faced by girls and women.

This World Sight Day, Seva Canada will be holding Seva’s Eye Opener fundraising event at Vancouver’s Heritage Hall, with special guest Dr. Paul Courtright, co-director of the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology (Seva’s partner in eastern Africa) and the world leader on the issue of gender and blindness.

Also, Seva will be launching a national on-line video contest “Her Sight Is Worth It” with great prizes. More about the contest and all our events soon at www.seva.ca.

Two-thirds of the world’s blind are women, yet they are the least likely to receive treatment. KCCO, our partner in East Africa, is the world leader on this issue and today I got to see their work first hand. Mollie, a Canadian donor, and I went with Margaret Kessy, KCCO’s Gender and Blindness Coordinator, to meet a group of village women called “Sentinels”.

These “Sentinels” are women who have committed to help find people with eye problems and encourage them to visit the Direct Referral Sites and get help. Margaret is working with 50 Sentinels in 14 different villages and is conducting a research project on the issue of gender and blindness. Today we met with 7 amazing women in a lovely village in the hills, surrounded by lush coffee and banana plantations.

Margaret was speaking with them about her research on the barriers to care faced by women and children and their role in helping people get treatment. She presented them with the materials they need to talk to patients about eye care, to collect information about their cases and to determine why they might refuse treatment. There are a lot of fears around eye surgery. Many people believe that if they get cataract surgery they will be given goats’ eyes, so you can imagine that there’s a bit of an uphill struggle to get people to hospital. According to Margaret, people may come to hospital if they have injured their eyes and are in pain, but with the painless white clouding of cataracts, they will not seek help — indeed, they likely don’t know that anything can be done to save their sight.

Today’s discussion, conducted in a mud-floored, windowless building in the heart of the village, was lively and full of warmth and commitment. All of the women clearly loved Margaret and felt comfortable asking questions and sharing ideas. Mollie and I were very impressed by their dedication to reach out to those who were very poor and who otherwise would not get eye care.

KCCO is a busy place. Next week there is a Childhood Blindness Workshop with people coming from Nepal, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Uganda and, of course, Tanzania. I’ll sit in on most of it, heading out part way through the week to see the trachoma work.

What a magical place this is. Kind, dedicated people doing great work and sharing their knowledge. I’m having a blast!

Heather

Yesterday was my first full day in Tanzania. At 9:30 a.m., I set off with a team from Kilimajaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology to conduct what is known as a DRS, or Direct Referral Site, like a screening centre for eye patients.

After an hour bouncing around in a jeep over rough, dusty roads, we reached Rongo District in the lush hills. By the time the team from KCCO arrived at the local hospital to conduct the screening, there were scores of patients, young and old, lined up waiting to have their eye problems addressed.

Over the course of the day, 120 patients were seen and a further 50 at the sub-DRS about 18 km away. Each patient had his or her visual acuity checked using an eye chart hung in the hospital courtyard, then the patient was seen by the Assistant Medical Officer and nurse. It was very moving to see the care and kindness shown to each patient – the reassuring hand on their shoulders, the soft words and the dedication to help them get better.

Those patients who needed cataract surgery were referred to a counselor, who helped explain the process and allay their fears. At the end of the day, 10 patients with mature cataracts were brought back to KCCO for cataract surgery. They will have their operations today and will be driven back to their homes once all the follow-up is complete.

Here’s a film (made later and added in) showing KCCO and the work at the Direct Referral Site:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMYOYSXlpLw]

Today, I’m travelling with Margaret, KCCO’s Gender and Blindness Coordinator to visit more projects in the field. Got to dash!

Heather
(more…)