Seva Canada: A Solution in Sight

Cataract scare opened Burnaby woman’s eyes to world

Burnaby woman, 28, realized how lucky she was to have access to good treatment

By Elaine O’Connor, The Province January 21, 2010

After a series of medical treatments, Burnaby’s Karin DuBois was shocked to be diagnosed with cataracts.

She was only in her 20s.

Thankfully, doctors assured her that the risk of losing her sight was small.

“They told me it’s such a simple surgery and that the chances of success are so high that it’s not even a concern — the chances of me going blind are very slim,” the 28-year-old recalled.

That’s far from the case for millions in the developing world.

Ninety per cent of the world’s 45 million blind live in impoverished countries; two-thirds are female.

Most of these cases are preventable. The most common cause of blindness is cataracts, which could be removed with a simple 15-minute, $50 surgery. But women and girls are only half as likely as men to get treated.

That’s one of the surprising statistics DuBois learned while creating an awareness video recently for SEVA Canada.

The Vancouver-based registered charity funds eye-care clinics and trains doctors to perform cataract surgeries in seven developing countries: Tanzania, India, Guatemala, Cambodia, Nepal and Tibet.

DuBois’ video earned her second place in SEVA’s national Her Sight Is Worth It video contest. The winners were announced Wednesday.

The B.C. Institute of Technology grad and Global B.C. assistant director said she wanted to create the video as a way of giving back.

“I’m lucky enough to live in Canada, where medical access is available. If I was in India or elsewhere, my chances of being permanently blind would be so much greater,” she said.

First-place winner Derick Groves of Victoria admitted he had little knowledge of the issue before entering the contest.

“It’s one of the things you don’t really think about,” said the 33-year-old film-school grad.

“It is a little surprising to see the percentage of women that make up the total number of blind and how little care they get.”

Third place went to Ontario-native Rhonda Kara Hanah, who temporarily lost sight in one eye after contracting an infection in Mexico.

SEVA launched the contest last fall, calling on Canadians 13 and older to submit three-minute movies about blindness in women and girls in the developing world.

The contest, sponsored by GAP Adventures and the Planterra Foundation, came with a unique reward: The group is restoring the sight of one woman and girl in the names of each of the three winners.

Penny Lyons, SEVA Canada’s executive director, said the entries served to highlight the “direct link between poverty and blindness.”

“As soon as you restore someone’s sight,” Lyons explained, “they can go to school or work, so by treating blindness in women, you are reducing poverty effectively and inexpensively, especially as it’s been very clearly documented that women are the key to sustainability in their families, communities and nations.”

The films, online at www.seva.ca/contest.htm, will be screened in 12 Canadian cities as part of the World Community Film Festival, which comes to Vancouver on Jan. 31.

eoconnor@theprovince.com
© Copyright (c) The Province

The story of Tsultrim Dorje
by Dolma Chugi, Seva Tibet Staff

“I asked the doctors to take my eyes out and exchange them with Tsultrim’s many times, but they kept telling me that such a medical technology wasn’t invented,” confessed Tsultrim’s grandmother. She would gladly have given her precious sight to her grandson and spared his parents, his aunt and herself the many tears they have cried in the past three years. She is pictured here on the far right with Tsultrim and his aunt. Worrying about his eye health has aged her beyond her 68 years.

Tsultrim lives mostly with his grandmother and his aunt because his parents work long hours. They only have time to be with him occasionally on weekends and during their holidays. His mother works as a bathroom cleaner at a hotel and his father is a porter. Together they earn only US $192 a month and that has to feed and support Tsultrim, his grandmother, his aunt and themselves.

For three years, Tsultrim’s father lived with the nightmare that Tsultrim’s blindness wouldn’t be treated and that he wouldn’t be able to go to school like all the other children. He shared his fears with me and, after rolling his eyes for a few seconds, he said “You know, nowadays, no schooling means no academic degree, and no degree means no life!” His voice trembling, he continued, “Tsultrim is my only child. The devastation of his life is the tragedy of my life!”

Tsultrim had his first surgery on one eye when he was only four months old. Ever since, he has been terrified of hospitals and doctors. His most recent surgeries were performed by Dr. Judy Newman, a pediatric ophthalmologist and volunteer from the USA. Dr. Newman has been a pioneer of pediatric eye programs for Seva in Tibet. She remembers Tsultrim very well because he cried the loudest and hardest throughout every visit, from registration all the way through examination, vision-checking, eye drops and surgery. He even cried during follow-up visits.

Cataract management for children is more complicated than for adults and, as a result,
Tsultrim has already undergone three surgeries. Intraocular lens implants are not recommended until the age of nine when ophthalmic nerves are better developed.  Now, at last, after all the crying and struggles, his sight has been restored and he can wear aphakic glasses – glasses that work to replace the eye’s natural lens. He can behave like a normal child!

One sunny Sunday morning three months after Tsultrim’s surgery, I was strolling in the Naga Park behind the Potala Palace and unexpectedly met Tsultrim and his aunt. Tsultrim was running energetically around the pathways. His aunt was thrilled to tell me that Tsultrim had been admitted to kindergarten in the fall. Tsultrim never stopped running around during our whole conversation.

On Tuesday, I visited Tsultrim in his kindergarten. It was almost lunch time. All the kids had just packed up their text books and cleared their desks to get ready for lunch. They would eat together and then nap together in a dorm. Tsultrim, however, was waiting for his aunt to pick him up and take him home for his lunch and nap. I felt sorry he couldn’t stay with his classmates but his aunt explained that tuition at kindergarten costs US $176 each year and is double if Tsultrim stays at school for his lunch and nap. This extra cost would be a huge burden to the family because of their meager income. Nevertheless, being able to go to school and get an education – just like all the other children – counts more than anything else to Tsultrim and his family!

The team at Seva Nepal are brilliant! Kandel, Parami and Shravan work tirelessly to bring eye care to the very poor, those in remote areas, women and children. They are models of compassion in action.

Here’s a series of photos that Parami sent us from an eye camp that took place in Terathum, Nepal this autumn. It illustrates the tremendous burden (literally) that cataract blindness places on families and communities.

This woman was one of 5 patients who were carried on the backs of their relatives to the Seva-supported eye camp. Some patients walked two full days to seek care.

Here are the happy results of this camp: A total of 564 patients were examined in the three-day eye camp and 67 surgeries were performed, of which 54 were sight-restoring cataract surgeries (31 female & 23 male) and 13 (female 7 & 6 male) were other surgeries like pterigium, chalazion & entropion surgeries*. A total of eight bilateral blind patients underwent surgery.

Our deepest thanks to the team and to our wonderful Seva donors who made this possible. And thank you to Parami, Shravan and Kandel at Seva Nepal for sharing this heartwarming story with us.

To give the gift of sight, visit www.seva.ca.

Definitions:

What is pterigium?:  A pterygium is fleshy tissue that grows in a triangular shape over the cornea (the transparent part or front window of the eyeball). It may grow large enough to interfere with vision.

What is chalazion?: A chalazion  is a cyst in the eyelid that is caused by inflammation of a blocked meibomian gland, usually on the upper eyelid. Chalazions differ from styes in that they are more painful than styes, as well as bigger in size. A chalazion could take months to fully heal with treatment and could take years to heal without any.

What is entropion?: Entropion is a medical condition in which the eyelids fold inward. It is very uncomfortable, as the eyelashes rub against the cornea constantly. Entropion is usually caused by genetic factors and may be congenital. Trachoma infection may cause scarring of the inner eyelid, which may cause entropion. Treatment is a simple surgery in which excess skin of the outer lids is removed. Prognosis is excellent if surgery is performed before the cornea is damaged.

By Penny Lyons
Executive Director, Seva Canada

November 20^th

Thirty six elderly Tanzanians sit under the shade of a Poinciana tree in Ndatu village.  All are from the same village in the district of Arumeru, about an hour from Moshi.  They know each other well so the air is a filled with the sounds of laughter and conversation.

I have come to this village with a team from KCCO.  There are 4 of us:  Herieth Mganga, KCCO’s new gender and blindness coordinator, Fred the driver who doubles as the visual acuity tester in the field,  Dr. Amadou Bio from Benin,  who is training to be an ophthalmologist, and myself.

All 36 of these people have agreed to participate in a study (there will be 150 participants in total from 4 different villages) to determine the effect that correcting presbyopia (or age related far-sightedness) has in their daily life.  Do reading glasses make an elderly Tanzanian’s life easier?  Most are illiterate but if they can now pick the stones from the rice, thread a needle and take thorns from their fingers will this significantly improve their quality of life?

There is very little refractive error in Africa and most of these people have distance vision that someone 40 years their junior would envy.  The flip side of that great distance vision is that many of the 36 have difficulty seeing things that are close so “reading” glasses (even though most do not read) are provided to them free of charge.  While doing the vision testing, four cases of cataract were diagnosed and referred on to hospital for treatment and a few infections were treated.

Each person who received reading glasses will be visited in their homes in three months to determine what difference, if any, the reading glasses had on their daily life.

At this point you might be asking yourself if this study is important, or even relevant, to the elimination of preventable and treatable blindness.  It is because it illustrates the cornerstone of all of Seva and our partner’s work; together we create programs that are based on evidence.  Evidence tells us a problem exists, it tells us the extent of the problem and it tells us what should be done to correct that problem.

With evidence, we can spend our donor’s dollars effectively and get the maximum benefit – whether we are studying presbyopia, childhood blindness, the incidence of cataract in a population or the barriers people face when trying to access treatment.

By Penny Lyons, Executive Director, Seva Canada
November 16, 2009

Madagascar, where do I even start? Stunningly beautiful, heartbreakingly poor, rich in culture, language and traditions and complex in its politics.

I travelled here from Tanzania with Dr. Paul Courtright, co-director of the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology (KCCO) based in Moshi, Tanzania. KCCO has been working with Madagascar eye care programs since 2007 – at first helping create national eye care programs and now also funding training, outreach programs and a pediatric program.

Our task here is to follow up and expand on the work that KCCO has done, as well as evaluate the programs that have been funded by Seva donors. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has funded outreach in the Vakinankaratra region, as has the May and Stanley Smith Charitable Trust.

Each of these two organizations have helped fund the creation and implementation of community outreach programs in this populous region in the highlands of Madagascar centered around the city of Antsirabe, just 3 hours drive south of the capital city of Antananarivo. In addition, Alcon Canada generously donated an enormous amount of ophthalmological supplies, including intraocular lenses.

Seva programs that I have visited previously have all been well established. National blindness plans were in place, outreach was active and well organized, a comprehensive training program was in place and all programs were working toward both financial sustainability and ensuring services were available to the most vulnerable – particularly children and women.

It has been both enlightening and rewarding to witness the birth of a new program here in Madagascar and to fully comprehend the partnerships at all levels of government, healthcare and community that have to be created in order for eye care programs to succeed. In fact, given the complexities, it is a wonder it happens at all. But here in Madagascar, as in our other programs, there are individuals, hospitals and local governments that have dedicated themselves to making it happen and are committed not only to creating eye care programs but are also committed to creating excellent ones.

Today I visited an outreach program in Mendoto, a small centre about 150km west of Antsirabe. When the team from Fitsaboana Hospital in Antsirabe arrived at about 8am, there were over 300 people in the courtyard of the local hospital. We assumed they were patients waiting to be seen at ALL the hospital departments, but as we started to set up we realized they were all there to have their eyes screened and treated.

The team quickly organized the room we were given. A visual acuity chart and registration desk was set up; there were 2 examination areas for the ophthalmologists; the counselors, who provide information to those requiring more care like cataract surgery or low-vision services, had a small table; and a makeshift pharmacy was created. Patients were divided into two lines, one for children and one for adults, and each ophthalmologist took one line. Periodically someone was sent to scout the lines to make sure those who required the most complex care or who were very elderly were brought to the front of the line.

It was hot, both outside and inside the makeshift clinic. No one complained and no one took a break. Bottles of water were brought to the team, but they barely stopped to take a drink. Everyone knew how many patients were waiting and how far they might have travelled to get there. They could drink later.

In the first two hours, 4 children were diagnosed with congenital or developmental cataract in both eyes and appointments for surgery were made.  Many more children were seen but who could not be helped – children blind because of damage to their corneas – many of whose sight could have been restored if they lived in a developed country. Children with birth defects or severe low vision were referred to the counselors so their families could learn where to find help. Twenty-four adults were scheduled for cataract surgery and, once again, there were many more who simply could not be helped.

The ophthalmologists were unbelievably kind and gentle with all who came and, even after very long waits in the brutal sun, not one patient complained. The last patient was seen at 6:30 pm. All were grateful to be treated and I was grateful to be there.

Our gratitude to the Canadian International Development Agency, the May and Stanley Smith Charitable Trust and Alcon Canada for their generous support in bringing eye care to the people of Madagascar.

By Penny Lyons

I arrived in Moshi, Tanzania on November 6th.  The jacaranda trees are showering lavender coloured blossoms, Mt. Kilimanjaro shines brightly in the early morning sun and the hot season is just beginning.

Part of my job as Executive Director of Seva Canada is to evaluate Seva’s programs overseas. So, at least once a year, I visit one of our partners.  On this trip I am visiting the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology (KCCO) located in Moshi, Tanzania.  KCCO is a mentoring and training facility for community ophthalmology programs and is the only institution of its kind in all of Africa.

I have been attending, and help teach, a course on ‘bridging strategies’.  Bridging strategies are all the activities used to connect people and communities with the hospitals that serve them.  KCCO’s challenge is how to reach the unreached – to find patients and help them get the eye care services they need and deserve.  The students in this course are ophthalmologists, community program managers, hospital directors and ophthalmic nurses from Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Madagascar as well as two of Seva’s partners from the Kham Eye Centre in Tibet.  The students are learning how to create community outreach programs or to improve existing ones.

Today the students and I visited a Direct Referral Site (DRS) which is a screening program where a team, composed of an organizer, doctor, nurse refractionist and counselor, visit selected sites on a regular schedule, diagnosing, counseling and treating patients. Patients who need surgery are transported back to the hospital for surgery.  This DRS is in the Same district, about 2 hours drive south from Moshi.  The KCCO team will be in Same, based in a government hospital, for 3 days.  At the end of the three days the team will transport those patients needing further care, like cataract surgery, back to Moshi.  Once the patients have been treated they will be transported back to the hospital in Same.

I watched the students learn the process of the DRS.  Notebooks and pens in hand they asked questions of the ophthalmologist, counselor, refractionist and the outreach coordinator.  They evaluated KCCO’s outreach programs against their own.  They made suggestions and compared notes with each other.  They critiqued.

Patients, young and old, sat on benches lining the walls and watched the students while waiting their turn to see the doctor.  None of the patients seemed frightened or concerned.  KCCO has been doing outreach in this district for a number of years and their reputation for good-quality care and compassion precedes them.

It was fun to watch the students interact with the patients, outreach team and the other students.  Over the past few days, while participating in the course, they have become comfortable with each other and the easy familiarity crosses cultural and language barriers.  Our two Tibetan partners, an ophthalmologist who is the Director of the Kham Eye Centre and Kham’s community programs director, offer a unique perspective to the African participants that all can benefit from.  I think many of the students will continue to keep in touch and support each other as they develop and refine their own outreach programs.

This support and sharing across borders and across eye care programs is one of the most important activities that Seva supports and is one that will help ensure that effective programs, that reach the unreachable, are developed in all of our program areas.  Africans helping Africans with a little Tibetan know how thrown in for good measure.

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.

It’s eye camp season again in Tibet. Each day hundreds of blind Tibetans are being screened by Seva for eye problems and scores of people blinded by cataracts are receiving sight-restoring surgery.

Seva Canada has been working for over 27 years to restore sight and prevent blindness in the developing world. We’ve been working in Tibet since 1995, where we are the dominant eye-care provider, doing two-thirds of all cataract surgeries.

Worldwide 45 million people are blind, but people don’t go blind by the millions. They go blind one personal tragedy at a time. Here is one story about someone who was blind and had her sight restored by Seva thanks to the generosity of Seva’s donors.

Last autumn in Chamdo, Tibet, a little 7-year-old boy led his blind mother by the hand to a Seva surgical eye camp. Dekyi is a 48-year-old single mother with 6 children depending on her.

Dekyi told Sonam from Seva’s Tibet office, “I never had a husband, but I have two children. Dorjee is the younger one and he brought me here. The older one, my daughter, is at home herding the animals. I became an orphan when I was just 5. My only surviving family member was my older brother and he died 3 years ago.”

She groaned, but continued with a trembling voice. “I lost my sight two years ago and since then I have been depending on Dorjee and my 12-year-old daughter for living. I hope that my sight will be restored from this operation. There is a huge amount of debt mounted from my brother’s illness and death that I need to paid off and I need to free Dorjee for schooling and to raise my brother’s four children. Their mother died five years ago and left all the kids for my brother to raise. His death left no choice for the kids than to depend on me.”

She continued. “I am Dekyi. You know my that name means ‘happiness’ in Tibetan, but I’ve never been happy once in my life. My life has been all about death, loneliness, debts and now blindness. Often, I think I must have been a bad person in my previous life and that my bad karma is causing all this pain.”

When called to the examination room, Dekyi quickly pulled herself together, stood up with the support of her stick and called for Dorjee who was outside playing with other children. All of the sudden, Dekyi looked pale and restless. She fumbled with her hair and pressed it down at the back and said, “This is it. The only chance I have got. What if my blindness is diagnosed as untreatable?”

Dorjee led her by the hand to the examination room. With Dorjee’s help, she placed herself on a chair in front of the slit lamp. A few minutes later, she was diagnosed with bilateral cataracts and scheduled for a surgery in the afternoon on the same day. Dorjee rushed to her and held her from her behind and buried his head into her coat and cried for a long time. He shed tears for the joy of a new hope and for all the pain borne all the years by her mother and himself. Dekyi thanked and prayed for the Buddha, drawing her palms together at her chest, and then spoke with a tearful face, “I am now feeling happy and happy for the first time in my life.” She wiped her tears with her right-hand sleeve and then followed Dorjee for lunch. Dekyi was operated in that afternoon.

The next day, Dekyi had her vision tested and it was 6/9. She and Dorjee came to thank the Seva staff and to say goodbye. She looked much more tidy on that day than she did when she arrived at the camp. Her black hair was neat, she was smiling and she walked without the aid of her stick.

Carefully taking off her new sunglasses, she expressed her deep appreciation to Seva and asked that a particular message be conveyed to Seva’s donors. “Please tell all the people in your organization. They are the ones who have helped me end my bad karma and bring a glimpse of light to my life!” Tears of happiness were rolling down her cheeks as she said it.

Please consider supporting Seva Canada’s sight programs by becoming a monthly donor or giving the gift of sight. Call 604-713-6622 or visit our website at www.seva.ca.

On Wednesday, we received the most delightful letter from 7-year-old Sam Ng and his mother, Franzi.

Sam had been inspired by the pink breast cancer ribbons and other similar campaigns and decided to create his own colour and design of ribbon.

What he came up with was a beautiful, multi-coloured ribbon. As a member of the Bahá’í Faith, Sam wanted the ribbons to foster religious tolerance among his fellow Canadians. He sold the ribbons and the sign on his box read: By wearing this ribbon, I pledge to respect people of all faiths and religions.

Below that it said that the donations for the ribbons would go to Seva Canada.

Sam took his box everywhere he went. At times it took a lot of courage for him to approach strangers and ask them to buy and wear one of his ribbons. But he persisted.

Sam raised $80 for Seva’s sight restoration programs!

We at Seva Canada think Sam is marvelous and we hope you do too. Please comment on this post and send Sam a message of support for his amazing dedication and kindness.

Thank you, Sam!

On Saturday, the Globe and Mail published a two-page feature “A Clear Vision for Better Health” about cataract surgery on Vancouver Island.

The article was about streamlining the surgical process by following the Toyota Production System to make cataract surgery faster and cheaper and to save our health care dollars. Using this model, Royal Jubilee Hospital has increased its cataract surgical rate from 2,800 in 2003 to 3,900 surgeries in 2008.

Here at Seva we know all about CSR — cataract surgical rates. Our mission is to create high-volume, high-quality, low-cost, sustainable eye care programs in the developing world. The gold standard for efficient cataract surgery is our partner in India — Aravind Eye Care System.

With Seva’s help and with funding from CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, Aravind has become the most productive eye care centre in the world in terms of surgical volume and number of patients treated. In 2008, Aravind’s network of 5 hospitals saw over 2.7 million patients and performed over 300,000 surgeries (over 200,000 of them cataract surgeries). A cataract surgery can be performed in about 5 minutes.

It’s a good enough model for Professor Yunus, the economist and Nobel Prize winner, who is using some of his funds to build a network of eye hospitals in Bangladesh. Teams of eye specialists from Bangladesh are now being trained at Aravind.

So move over Toyota! You’re fine for cars, but if Canadians are looking for a health care revolution in eye care, they should look at Seva’s partner in India.

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.

What fun choosing party supplies! Seva’s planning a party at Vancouver’s Heritage Hall to mark World Sight Day, Thursday October 8th, and yesterday we visited A&B Partytime Rentals to choose all the supplies we need for the event.

A&B Partytime Rentals is a great family firm that has just celebrated its 50th anniversary. They’ve helped Seva out with previous events and I have to say that it is a joy to work with them. They call themselves a “full service” party and corporate event rental company and they’re not kidding.

From the moment we stepped into their lovely showroom, we had extremely helpful and friendly service. Board member, Nancy Mortifee, and I got advice on everything from martini glasses for our special cocktail (the Eye Opener) to table linens. We would like to express our huge thanks to co-owner, Daniel Sebal, for his kindness and generosity to Seva.

So, mark your calendars for Thursday October 8th at the Heritage Hall. Jane Mortifee and her band will be performing. Special guests include Dr. Paul Courtright of the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology in Tanzania and Dr. Salma Rai, a Seva-trained ophthalmologist from Nepal.

Posted by Heather Wardle, Development Director, Seva Canada

Imagine if you were blind from cataracts and lived in a village deep in the Himalayan region of Tibet. The world has gone dark. You can no longer see faces of loved ones. You have no way to cook or feed yourself. There are no seeing eye dogs, beeping crosswalks, or eye surgeons to help you.

In Tibet’s under-served mountainous region, seeing an eye doctor would have likely meant a multi-day trek to Lhasa. It would cost you many months salary pay to have cataracts removed. For too many, this means a mother, father, grandparent, or even child could not have cataracts removed and would remain blind.

Since the beginning, Seva has already tried to help the most vulnerable and has reached out to remote areas where there is no care. Now, in Tibet, people needing eye care but who have no way to travel to get it, can take Seva’s new bus on the Roof of the World!

This bus will travel to remote mountain villages, picking up blind patients and transporting them, free of charge, to a hospital in the city of Lhasa staffed by local Seva trained eye surgeons. There they will have cataracts removed and their vision restored! And after they have had their sight checked and all their post-operative care, they will be transported back to their villages. A magic bus!

Thanks to Seva’s generous donors like you, this bus will help us better reach the underserved and restore sight.

The following is a special post by Laura Spencer, a Seva volunteer:

I have been privileged to work with Seva projects in Guatemala that have been developed by amazing Seva staff. The highlight so far has been Seva’s three-day eye care outreach excursion to isolated villages, reaching indigenous Guatemalans who had never received eye care services before!

The three-day eye camp was funded and organized by Seva, with community development links made between the eye hospital – Vincent Pescadore in the northern region of Guatemala – and the community health promoters in various villages.

A crew of six Guatemalan eye clinic workers from Vincent Pescadore and I made the journey into the hot jungles of Guatemala’s mountainous central region. We ventured off with supplies of glasses, instruments and charts. After a four-hour drive, we arrived in Coban, the nearest town.

Outside of Coban, we transported ourselves and the supplies into a pick-up truck along with some local villagers. We made the slow, bumpy ride along the uneven, rocky road through mountains of corn and coffee fields to the community of Chilten.

The road was long, with a broken down van on the way holding us up. The difficulty in reaching the community was a testament to the difficulty the people have in reaching services on their own. Many of them had trekked even further from Chilten, from surrounding villages even deeper in the mountains.

An hour and a half later, we arrived! Over 500 people were waiting in line to receive eye care. Excitement was in the air! The eye camp was set up in a school and the children were given the day off. As a result, they were either getting their eyes checked or running around adding to the excitement!

The organizing staff quickly set up six stations for smooth service delivery. They included an area for registration, for a visual acuity exam, a consultation with the optometrist, a meeting room for cataract patients, and another location for dispensing eye glasses.

For patients in need of cataract surgeries, transportation to Vincent Pescadore, food, and accommodation were free of charge. Those in need of glasses were provided with them at low cost or free of charge. It is such an amazing opportunity for these people and it was priceless for me to see the people’s faces as they went through the emotions of being offered free surgery and eye care.

Seva was one of the supporters, having developed the community link between the health promoters and the hospital Vincent Pescadore. The local volunteers were an integral part of the process, acting as translators for the hundreds of indigenous people who could not speak Spanish, but the Mayan language Quechi.

The first day was a great success! Thirty cataract patients were driven the 5 hours and back with free food, board and surgeries fully paid for by Seva and partners.

My personal contribution has been conducting research for my MA on why so few rural women are taking advantage of free surgeries, as is also the case in most developing countries. With the help from volunteers with translating, I surveyed or interviewed over 80 women over the course of the weekend, collecting information regarding the barriers to service for themselves and with regard to the women in need of eye care who were not present. I also enjoyed the company of the local children who were running around the school and waiting for me to finish interviewing their mothers and grandmothers!

The second and third day we drove a few hours more to another village, meeting the needs of the other surrounding communities. More free surgeries and eye care services were delivered and received.

Just before leaving the last eye camp, a truckload of the first patients from two days before arrived. They were returning from the northern clinic where their surgeries were conducted by Guatemalan surgeons. Their post-operative eyes were healing behind their large, protective sunglasses. Accompanied by the community volunteers, they made their way home, with new hope for survival, with the ability to contribute to their family again and with an increased quality of life.

The six of us made the four-hour trip back to the northern eye clinic which is located in the largest, poorest and most secluded province of Guatemala, El Peten. Once we arrived, the patients from the same day and the others from the day before were either waiting for their surgery or waiting a day to have a post-operative examination. Whether through translation or directly in Spanish, the patients shared their fears and excited anticipation of their restored vision.

I will remember well many of the patients. In particular, I will remember one man who said to me, “Vision is the most important thing. Without it, all is painful.” Another patient, an older woman in traditional dress, will remain in my memory because of her smile. She smiled throughout the whole experience, which is unusual for the culture (but she would not smile for the camera, more common for the culture!). I was honoured to see her through the whole process: from the line-up for services, the waiting room for cataract care, on the bus up to the northern clinic, before, during and after surgery, at meals in the hospital and finally to see her off as she got on the minivan back to her village.

Thank you to all the donors, sponsors and Seva staff for making this eye camp a success!

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at Benwell-Atkins (RRD) in Vancouver checking our new 2010 calendar on press. What fun to see the gorgeous photos come to life! Talk about “hot off the press” – the ink was still wet when I was checking the samples and marveling at the colours.

Calendars will be ready for sale from the Seva office by June 22nd. Our huge thanks to photographer Jon Kaplan for donating the images; to Gregory Green for his lovely design; and all the folks at Benwell-Atkins for their work on this job. It’s a beauty!

All proceeds from the sale of Seva Canada’s annual calendar go to restore sight and prevent blindness in the developing world. Call the office at 604-713-6622 to order yours!

Here’s the back cover: