According to researchers at the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London, vitamin D could reduce the effects of aging on the eyes and vision.

The British research team has discovered that vitamin D reduces the effects of aging in mouse eyes and significantly improves the vision of older mice. Vitamin D supplements could become a simple and effective way to combat age-related eye diseases.

Published in the journal Neurobiology of Ageing, the research findings show that after six weeks of following a vitamin D-rich diet, the number of macrophage cells, which are potentially damaging for the eye, were considerably reduced in the eyes of the mice. Researchers also observed a considerable reduction in the amount of deposits of amyloid beta, a toxic molecule that accumulates with age. Vitamin D would therefore combat two phenomena that lead to the development of age-related eye diseases.

“Researchers need to run full clinical trials in humans before we can say confidently that older people should start taking vitamin D supplements, but there is growing evidence that many of us in the Western world are deficient in vitamin D and this could be having significant health implications.”

A report in 2010 by the CBC, stated that more than 1.1 million Canadians or about four per cent of the population are vitamin D deficient.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/240393.php

Retinal cells are generally slow to form. They take years or even decades to multiply, often going undetected. However, retinoblastoma is more like the sprinter than the marathon runner. This highly aggressive cancer develops at a devastating speed in children.

Researchers have long known that loss of a tumour suppressor gene named RB1 launches retinoblastoma during foetal development. But they didn’t know the other steps involved in the rapid transformation from a normal cell to a malignant tumour cell.

The most widespread theories held that the mutation of the RB1 gene affected chromosomes, causing multiple genetic mutations. Researchers have discovered, however, that these tumours contain very few mutations. The RB1 gene does not cause other genes involved in the tumour to mutate, but affects them, causing often reversible dysfunctions.

This discovery could lead to new treatments to cure retinoblastoma.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120113205452.htm

See also, Seva’s blog post on 5-year-old Himal in Nepal and retinoblastoma.

Success, without side effects, will allow human research to continue

January 25, 2012

Monday, news broke that researchers improved the vision of two legally blind women by injecting embryonic stem cells into their eyes.

Some media outlets are hailing the findings as showing a cure for degenerative blindness, but, according to stem cell experts, the most exciting implications of the study are that neither woman experienced any ill effects from the transplant, such as tumor growth or rejection.

“It provides promise that stem cells may indeed be safe,” says Paul Tesar, a genetics and neurosciences professor who focuses on stem cell research at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. “A lot of attention has been directed toward the effectiveness of the trial, but without a clear control group, we just have anecdotal evidence of effectiveness.”

More importantly, the findings allow Advanced Cell Technology, the group behind the trial, and other researchers to continue human testing. ACT has already moved on to more trials, according to Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of the company.

[Learn about FDA approval for the stem cell study.]

ACT will begin ramping up the number of cells implanted into patients’ eyes to determine optimal dosages and to figure out just how much vision can be restored. “We had another patient treated yesterday,” Lanza says.

The human eye is the perfect organ for early stem cell tests, according to Tesar. Researchers have easy access to the eye to monitor cell growth, so they’re able to easily detect tumors if they appear. It’s also extremely easy to tell if the treatment is working—a patient’s vision is either improving or it isn’t.

The four months both patients have been tumor free is “clearly a sufficient amount of time” to test the safety of cells, at least when compared to previous animal trials, Tesar says. In failed animal trials, uncontrollable cell proliferation usually happens within hours or days. Now that researchers know that these types of stem cells appear to be safe for human implantation, researchers can begin to “apply this type of technology to any number of organs and conditions.”

Lanza, of ACT, says the research could have far-reaching implications for patients who suffer from all kinds of degenerative vision conditions and other tough-to-treat diseases. He says ACT is already working on stem cell treatments that have cut the death rate in animals suffering from a heart attack and that can restore blood flow to limbs that might have otherwise been amputated.

[Most Americans support embryonic stem cell research.]

He says ACT developed the treatment with the idea of slowing degenerative eye conditions, but the effects in the company’s first two patients—one woman’s eyesight improved from being only able to detect motion to being able to read the top several letters on a vision chart—surpassed his expectations.

“The goal of this therapy was not to cure blindness but to slow down and prevent it. That we’re actually seeing a vision improvement is tremendous,” he says. These early findings could open the door to earlier and perhaps more effective treatment. “We’ve got to be sure we’re not going to harm the eye of a young patient who still has relatively good vision. Ultimately the real goal is to get rid of the diseases altogether.”

Although it’s too early to say how long the initial two patients’ vision improvements will last, Lanza is confident that stem cells can be a long-term solution for a number of diseases.

“There’s a very real chance these cells could survive for a very long time. It’s a question we don’t have the answer to, but these cells survive the lifetime of the animals we’ve studied,” he says. “They may last years, decades. It’s something we need to follow.”

jkoebler@usnews.com

Twitter: @jason_koebler

Would you give a brief walk through the Seva project?

I have documented several Seva projects around the world. Seva is an international organization whose mission is to eliminate preventable blindness around the world with a strong program in gender equality and equal access to care. Their method is to partner up with an existing local facility providing them with the funding and expertise to conduct eye care programs with the mandate that hopefully within 10 years Seva can move on and the facility will have become self sustaining on their own.

My work with Seva involves documenting their facilities and the work in these facilities; where the funding is going to and what differences they are making in the lives of the locals. I always enjoy traveling to areas that are conducting “eye camps”. These are remote regions that do not have a permanent primary eye care facility and we actually bring the full clinic and medical personal into these areas for a couple of days to look after the people in the region. We have just returned from an amazing trip in Humla, Western Nepal in Oct conducting a 3-day eye camp on the northwestern foothills of the Himalayas. We had fundraised for this eye camp since March 2011. Our facilitators in Nepal broadcast the dates of the eye camp over the FM radio throughout the villages located in the foothills of the Himalayas. We then traveled up and met up with our Nepalese medical team in Simikot. We set up camp at the Citta hospital there. Over a 3 day period, we saw over 900 people and conducted 80 eye surgeries, handed out hundreds of bottles of eye drops and over 800 pairs of sunglasses and reading glasses. I was there not only to document the eye camp but also the lives of the people living there. Stories of the joys and simplicity of their lives along with the harshness of their living conditions at high altitude with no running water or electricity. It was an incredible experience.

To read more about the Humla eye camp visit http://bit.ly/xNSAf3

Gizele is hoping to raise $2 for every kilometre of the ride for Seva Canada’s eye care programs in eastern Africa, specifically, Malawi, Madagascar, Burundi and Tanzania. She has already raised  over $12,000 and she hasn’t even started yet!

“My father showed me a newspaper article about the need for cataract surgeries in Africa. It was a pivotal moment for me and I quickly committed to fundraising for Seva. Once I had made that decision suddenly my trip found the ‘heart’ that it was lacking,” said Gizele Price.

Blindness and visual impairment is one of the largest health disabilities in the world with 285 million people who are visually impaired, of which 39 million are blind but it’s solvable.  80% of  blindness can be prevented or treated, often with a 10-minute cataract surgery costing just $50. And in Africa, childhood blindness and low-vision caused by cataracts is up to 10x more prevalent than in Canada.

“Seva couldn’t have asked for a better ambassador than Gizele to start 2012, our 30^th Anniversary year. Gizele’s amazing commitment to do this physically challenging ride, raising funds and awareness of Seva’s work, is unbelievable especially since she considers herself to be ‘a rider of average fitness… just a girl on a bike.’ She is much more than that to us at Seva. Blindness and poor vision keep people trapped in poverty but regaining sight and preventing blindness can transform their lives. Adults and children are able to go back to work or school and lead healthy, productive lives, entire communities have a chance at a better future. What Gizele is doing inspires all of us to take risks and live our dreams while making the dreams of others come true.” said Penny Lyons, Executive Director of Seva Canada. Restoring someone’s sight is the single most cost-effective health intervention to reduce poverty according to the World Health Organization.

The Tour d’Afrique (www.tourdafrique.com/tours/tourdafrique ) is a 94-stage race broken up into 8 sections. The daily stages average 123 km in length, and range from 80 km on rough terrain to more than 180 km on the best paved roads. Travelling through 10 countries in all, Gizele will cycle along the Nile past ancient temples, through the Sudanese desert, and up into Ethiopia’s rugged Simian Mountains. After crossing the Equator in Kenya, she’ll pedal past legendary Mount Kilimanjaro, to Lake Malawi, Victoria Falls, and along the edges of the magnificent Kalahari and Namib deserts, en route to the finish her ambitious and epic journey in Cape Town, South Africa.

To help Gizele reach her goal of $2 for every kilometre ($24,000) for Seva Canada visit http:///www.bit.ly/Cairo2Capetown4Sight

To keep up-to-date with Gizele on her ride read her blog at http://jonah2africa.wordpress.com/

DR: Hey Wavy! Thanks for taking my call. How are you?

Wavy: Semi-spectacular!

DR: That’s the best we can hope for, isn’t it? My kids have been watching Saint Misbehavin’ at night before bed. I put it on the other day and I wasn’t sure what they’d think and I kept saying “I can turn it off if you like,” but they loved it. They’ve watched it lots of times and my oldest daughter wants to work at your Camp Winnarainbow when she’s older.

Wavy: Ahhh, no kidding. You know that when people ask me what my greatest legacy is, I always have to say the kids who have come out of Winnarainbow. I’ve been doing the camps for 35 years now.

Saint Misbehavin' : The Wavy Gravy Movie

DR: How did that start?

Wavy: It was serendipity. You know that coincidence is a miracle that God doesn’t take credit for. My wife asked me to babysit our son – who was seven years old at that time – while she attended a sufi camp – that being her spiritual lineage. It was out in the Mendocino among the redwoods. I had noticed that many parents there had brought their kids, and that sometimes meant that they couldn’t attend meditations. So, I said, “Give me the kids and I’ll keep them busy.” A few other parents – one who was a juggler, another who was a film director – helped me keep the kids involved. It started to take off and we ran our first camp at the Hermitage at the Lama Foundation. That’s of course the place where Ram Dass wrote “Be Here Now”, which was the spiritual Bible of the sixties. We discovered that we really enjoyed doing it and the kids seemed to enjoy us. We moved the whole scheme to another campsite a few miles away and found that the kids really enjoyed their own personal liberation and it made it easier for the parents to attend their meditations. So, it’s evolved to the point where we have 700 kids every summer at camp. We take 150 at a time for seven weeks over the summer. We have a week of camp for adults now too and it’s grown to the point where people come from all over the world. Last year, after the nuclear accident in Japan, we had a whole group fly from over there seeking higher ground at Winnarainbow.

DR: It’s become a truly legendary camp. Both of my kids would do anything to attend.

Wavy: Well, in the early days we did camps at the Lama Foundation and we did one on the east coast at the Omega Foundation. Eventually, the Hog Farm found some permanent land.

DR: How did you know when you’d found the right place?

Wavy: I went into this oak grove and in my imagination I immediately envisioned a circle of teepees. We found a way to purchase the land and I moved onto it with a part of my extended family. I live in Berkeley during the rest of the year, but for the camp season I live five miles outside of Laytonville. It’s a pretty little town, but if you blink, you’ll miss it.

DR: A lot of things, the best things in life are like that. It gets more mysterious as it goes along, doesn’t it?

Wavy: It is all a mystery to me – the adventure of life. My adventure started out when my parents were living in Princeton, New Jersey. I remember, one of my earliest memories, was when my father was away in Venezuela working as an architect. I was five years old and my mother had put me out in the yard for my morning airing when this guy with a shock of white hair comes walking by. He asked my mother if he could walk me around the block; now in those days, that was not such a shocking proposition. The thing I absolutely remember from that walk was how funny that old guy smelled. Do you know who he was?

DR: No idea.

Wavy: Albert Einstein!

DR: No… *beep*.

Wavy: Absolutely true. Now, everybody who I’ve told this to has asked me what we talked about and I have no idea. The only thing I remember is that he smelled like nobody else I’d ever met – or met since. Now, my nose is open and I’m waiting to finally get the chance to say to somebody “You smell just like Albert Einstein!”

DR: Now, that’s a one liner seventy years in the making!

Wavy: Indeed! Still waiting to use it! Well, at seventeen and a half years of age, my parents divorced and I had no idea of how I’d make it to college without any support. A high school advisor told me that the GI bill for the Korean war was going to be cut off in ten days, so it was a good time to volunteer for the army and have my college paid for.

DR: Wavy, it’s impossible to picture you in the army.

Wavy: Yeah, but I volunteered for the draft in the army. Hard to believe, but true. Mostly, I painted murals and decorated day rooms for the military. Here’s a funny story. So, usually, I cleaned my paint brush on my uniform which rapidly turned every colour except for khaki. One day, I was on the parade ground at Fort Dix and a general drove by in his jeep. Suddenly, it screamed to a halt and the general asked me, “What army are you in, soldier!” I answered in a tiny voice, “Yours sir!” He looked me up and down and drove off. I think I eventually ended up decorating his basement.

DR: What happened after you got out of the army?

Wavy: After the service, I went to Boston University and attended the amazing theatre school there. We were located on St. Bethel Street in a big ancient gargoyle-covered building. A lot of the greatest directors in America came by there. My main occupation was crewing in the costumes department. That lasted for a while, but a lot of the teachers in the theatre department were there because of the McCarthy era blackballs. When that passed, they all quit and went back to New York to practice their craft. They took me with them. While I was there I read about jazz and poetry readings in San Francisco and the whole scene that was growing there. I thought I could do that and got my first gig in the basement of a bar in Boston called Pebble in the Rock. After a while, my partner and I hitched into Maine and started a coffee house there. A little later on, that ended and I went to New York again to study at the Neighbourhood Playhouse and I started to do readings at the coffee houses in Greenwich Village. I ended up as the poetry and entertainment director at The Gaslight, which was the premiere venue for the scene in those days.

DR: So many people got their start there.

Wavy: People would line up around the block to look at the beatniks they had heard frequented the place. After each reading, people would throw money into a hat. It was great at first, but it got tedious after a couple of years. The poems weren’t coming out of me quickly, so in between poems I started to talk a lot about the weird day I’d had. Then one night, a guy came in and said skip the poems and talk about your weird day and you’ll be a hit. So, I was sent around country doing my stand-up thing and I opened for John Coltrane; The lonious Monk; Peter, Paul and Mary. Big acts at the time. When I was at The Gaslight, I was organizing hootenannies and this young guy named Bob Dylan walked in.

DR: Did you realize he had something special right away?

Wavy: Oh yeah. He came in and asked, “Do you mind if I play tonight?” and you know, I was so accustomed to the ‘moon, june, spoon,’ rhyme schemes of the folk scene and he came up with some very fresh images. “Hard rain” was written on my typewriter. But, I remember first hearing “Visions of Joanna” with its “ghosts of electricity” images and it was like nothing we’d ever heard before.

DR: There’s a scene in the film where we’re told that you told your wife to be – Jahanara – that you didn’t think you’d live for very long. Are you surprised that you’re still live and kicking?

Wavy: Oh yeah, I didn’t think I’d make forty. Those were turbulent times. I was tap dancing on the edge all of the time. I was certainly ready to do anything to stop the genocide in Southeast Asia. There were times I’d go to a protest and they were taking me out of the window of the bus in a full body cast. Even like that, there’d be cops blowing whistles and encircling me and like I was being given a penalty in a hockey game. It was a truly raucous situation I lived in for years.

DR: Truly! It’s quite a transition from a poet and a stand up raconteur to a political agitator and finally a clown. How did all of that come about?

Wavy: I discovered that when I was dressed as a clown, policemen wouldn’t hit me. So, when I went to the Republican convention in Kansas in 1976, I bought every red clown nose in the States and put them on the resistors. Nobody got hurt. One of my favourite memories was when – in the early days of the Hog Farm – we took a baby pig on the bus to remind us of our humble beginnings. We decided to run that pig for president in 1968, declaring it the first black and white candidate!

DR: That’s hilarious. I wanted to ask you this. I was just down at the Furthur concerts in Eugene. It had been a few years since I’d gone into deep hippie territory and I was amazed at the power and vibrancy of the scene. Why do you think this culture has had such lasting power?

Wavy: As for Furthur, there is a love affair between the band and the audience, that is so palpable you can almost see it. The band creates a groove and tosses it out, the audience wash themselves in it, and this great invisible ball of love goes back and forth. It’s like Ravi Shankar says: music elevates people beyond the slings and arrows of outrageous day-to- day-life and lifts them to a spiritual place.

DR: What kind of hippie legacy have the hippies left?

Wavy: You can see it in the creative imagination of the Occupy movement. It’s Hippie know-how at work. We know how to go into an area and exist. We know how to maintain life support in difficult situations. I see the legacy in the Burning Man in the desert. I went there and it absolutely blew my mind. I’ve been going to Rainbow gatherings for many years. It’s where hippies go to reconnect with each other, share stories and crafts. We’re talking 8 to 9000 people in pristine forests.

Hippies are all over the place. With Burning man, it’s even more elaborate. They’re committed to bringing out everything, every coffee grain they bring in. It all has to be carried out. Going to Burning Man was like somebody plugged in a Rainbow gathering. It was like flying out of Merlin and into Flesh Gordon.

 DR: Enough said. One of the most fascinating aspects of the new movie about you is how it portrays your forty-year-plus experiment in communal living. Can we talk about how the Hog Farm – which has got to be one of the oldest functioning communes in North America – and how it started?

Wavy: It was serendipitous. After a bunch of stuff went on, Mrs. Gravy and I decided to move out of LA into the country and we moved to a little sleepy bucolic – oh God so beautiful town in the hinterlands – but only forty five minutes from Hollywood by the freeway in Semlin, California. We had this little cabin.

DR: How cool is that!

Wavy: So cool as to be frozen solid and glacial. We got this call from the Pranksters that Life magazine was going to shoot a cover on psychedelica and they wished for us to join them in a cover shot with the Pranksters and the Grateful Dead. We were honoured to drive into Hollywood to do this and while we were all posing for the cover, Ken Babbs stole the bus and took off to join Kesey who was on the lam in Mexico. So, in our little one bedroom cabin my wife and I ended up with thirty-five house guests. It was very chummy. We had a garage and a chicken coop where, needless to say, people were living. The landlord came by and said you can’t have that many people living in a one bedroom cabin and you’re evicted. Once again – in the land of kitchen synchronicity about an hour and a half later a neighbor drove by who said “Old Sol up on the mountain had a stroke and he needs someone to slop up them hogs!” So, we were given a mountain top with a house on it rent-free if we would tend these fifty hogs the size of a Davenport steer! They were enormous. We would feed them slop every day at sunset, but because we heard that about forty eight farmers a year were devoured by their livestock we always fed them in groups of two. On Saturday evenings, we would attend the mega music concerts at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles which was the premiere venue for bands like the Dead and the Airplane, the Rolling Stones and Cream and all of those bands. We had a travelling light show called The Single Winged Turquoise Bird and I got to climb on a microphone and do energy games with the audience at band breaks. Then, on Sundays, pretty much all of Southern California was invited to join us at our mountaintop for free celebrations. Each Sunday was a different theme. I remember kite Sunday during which there was no wind, which was kind of a bummer. Then, when the sun went down, the thermal energy shifted and then, well, you couldn’t tell if someone was flying a kite or whether they were just putting you on! It was really cool. We had a Hog Farm country fair with a kissing booth, a contest to see who could stay under water the longest, a pie eating contest and all that kind of stuff. Tiny Tim came up once and we built a theatre for him out of nothing – with benches and a stage. You know, if you get a few hundred people moving rocks with shovels and you can do just about anything.

DR: You’ve been through lots of incarnations with the Hog Farm over the last four decades or so. Are some of the original members still there? How has it all evolved?

Wavy: Yes, we have some of the original people. The amazing thing is that we’re still together.

DR: Was it a long trip to actually settle there? I know you were on the road for years.

Wavy: Yes, we were. One Christmas, a couple of the people who were mechanics bought us a white school bus to drive around. Shortly after that, we secured a gig working for Columbia Pictures in a film called Skidoo which was Otto Preminger’s …movie starring Groucho Marx as God and Jackie Gleason and Carol Channing. It’s available now on DVD and it’s pretty amazing if you think about it.

DR: I have a hard time imagining what it would be like living on a bus for seven years. Lots of people start endeavors like this, but they don’t stick to it like you did and still do. Are you someone who doesn’t need much privacy or personal space?

Wavy: After the bus trial, everything else seemed enormous. On the bus, we had these benches that would open up to double beds at night. Inside the benches were our footlockers where we had our personal space. We had overhead space also, so there was a pretty good amount of storage. Live on a sailboat and you’ll have a little less room than you had.

DR: I’m thinking of the film where some of the adult children who grew up at Hog Farm talk about have 25 mothers and fathers. That’s an amazing social experiment that you pioneered. I’m not sure if you realize that or if it’s sunk in. You live differently than most other people.

Wavy: Hold on now! First of all, if you look at a book called Intentional Communities, you’ll discover that there are more people living on communes now than there ever were in the sixties. A lot of people come together because they want a nice big house and stuff and they can’t afford it on their own. So, they get three or four other families together and they rent a big house. It all seems to come together around the refrigerator and the kitchen. And, if they can do group meals and take turns cooking, there’s a lot of blessings there. That seems to be the way it gets started. Then, we all had different jobs and we do again. There was a while before we hit the road that we all had the same job and then traveling on the road and doing the shows was amazingly unifying.

DR: I bet.

Wavy: In some respects, I really miss that but I don’t have the physical wherewithal that I could hold up in that kind of vector. I think you need to be in your twenties or thirties to pull that off.

DR: I’m out of that range, too. I used to be able to fall asleep anywhere – the baggage department of an Indian train – but those days seem far behind now. Lots more aches and pains.

Wavy: There’s no telling what’s going to happen. I could certainly exist nicely on a big rock and roll bus with a lot of people lugging my shit around if all I had to do is sit down in front of a microphone. That may still happen. Michelle (Esrick – the film’s director) wants to do that. Who knows? We’ll take the film and show it to folks from college to college and that sounds like a very interesting way to activate some young people.

DR: Far out.

Wavy: That’s in the fantasy vector at this moment.

DR: To me, that’s part of the great legacy created by this film. It has this model of living in the Hog Farm and it’s captured so beautifully. It’s there for young people to see.

Wavy: It’s also very much in both of my books. Like I say, there’s an enormous amount of communities out there and some of them are looking for more recruits. Some teams need to get together and try it. Everybody has a circle of friends.

DR: I have lived communally in a cabin on the mountains outside Vancouver, but I am still attracted to privacy and personal space.

Wavy: Well, at the ranch dwelling scene, some places are more condensed than others. Mr. and Mrs. Gravy for the first time ever have a two room structure – one on top of the other – and the bedroom is upstairs. Downstairs, is a tiny kitchen. We have a cookhouse on the property where most meals are held. We do Thanksgiving at the ranch and we do Christmas at the Bay area and some form of New Year’s. Though we don’t do the Grateful Dead New Year’s anymore. I’ve been working a lot with the Animal Liberation Orchestra for New Year’s. I’m happy to make a few extra bucks because mostly I do Camp Winnarainbow as my full time thing. There is an organic farm run by an Irish woman named Irene who does incredible stuff and she just put in a full orchard. Also, on the property is a business called In Tents and they make fireproof teepees and awnings. These are made by a woman who lives here named Georgie Chase.

DR: In Tents!

Wavy: Yeah, I made up that name. I’ve become very good at the short dash. Also, a fellow named Evan has an environmental business on the property and he talks about this amazing vision we had called Earth People’s Park that involves buying back the earth and giving it away. We actually purchased 500 acres of land in Northern Vermont and then the Feds after twenty years tried to seize it and we ended up having to turn it into a state park. This idea is what I call the last left hand turn in America. If you set up an office and you get people to mail in five or ten dollars a month and then you can take the money and buy back more land across the country and then leave it. These places would be way stations that would belong to everybody. In an altered state, I got an incredible buzz around that idea. It’s off the charts. That’s a spark that more young people are going to have to take up and run with. So, there’s a lot to do.

DR: No kidding!

Wavy: These things along with the Seva Foundation occupy most of my life. I organize those concerts and put them together for them. The biggest one we did was actually in Toronto, Canada. It featured the Grateful Dead and The Band. It was an absolutely memorable night and we raised a quarter of a million dollars for our work with Seva curing blindness in India and Nepal.

Wavy Gravy and David Crosby

DR: I remember some great Seva concerts in Vancouver with Bob Weir, Rick Danko and Jorma Kaukokken amongst others.

Wavy: Yes, we’re planning another. I’m in deep conversation with Elvis Costello about it, but his dad has gotten very sick. Bruce Cockburn and I are also talking about it. He played at our ranch and is now living in the Bay area. We do some wonderful shows on the property for about six or seven thousand people. The one to catch is called The Kate Wolf Memorial Festival, which we’ve done for many years. It’s pretty much an acoustic show and it’s as sweet and swell as anything you can imagine. That takes place during the kid’s camp so I zoom back and forth. We also broadcast the show in the immediate area, so everybody working on the farthest peripheries of the show are able to hear the main stage from the place they’re volunteering. If they ever do another Woodstock, I’ll do that. I’m there for Michael (Lang – the promoter of the Woodstock concerts) I’ve been to all three Woodstocks. I tell people that the first one made me famous and the other ones got me paid.

DR: Was it at the first Woodstock that you realized hippies could create an alternate way of doing things that could succeed or rival what was done outside in the ‘straight’ world?

Wavy: That’s why they got us to Woodstock. We’d been driving around the country and holding these open celebrations and they thought that we could be useful. We were startled when we came out of our chartered aircraft from New Mexico and we discovered that they’d made us security. That was a jaw dropper. We didn’t realize the impact we had until we were halfway across the Southwest going into Texas for the Texas Pop Festival. It began to sink in – the impact of our association with the Woodstock Festival. My God! We’re still getting feedback from that.

DR: Well, it all could have turned out so differently. There was such a hysterical element surrounding the culture at that point.

Wavy: So, I imagine if I can make it until 2019, it’s going to be interesting. They’ll really pull out all of the stops for the 50th anniversary celebration of Woodstock. It was crazy when it was thirty years old; it’ll be strictly nuts if they do a fiftieth. Eternity now! That’s my slogan! Eternity now! Here I go!

DR: Happy trails Wavy!

It was the end of an extraordinarily long day at the Menzikhang Hospital of Traditional Tibetan Medicine in Lhasa, Tibet. I happened to stop and look around just outside the back entrance area, finally clear of patients who had been lined up there since before dawn.

I was eager to return to the hotel, but something caught my eye.  I noticed two people in the far corner of the adjacent courtyard and construction area. Someone was sitting on a rock, leaning over and holding the hand of an elderly woman who was seated on the ground.

In the fading light it was hard to tell what was happening and I was worried that someone had collapsed because one person seemed to be wearing a white coat.  

Neither person seemed to move for the longest time as the sun set.  Finally the old women was helped to her feet and guided into the hospital to stay warm for the night.

The person gently leading her by the hand was Dr. Yangki-la the chief ophthalmologist. After a long day of performing cataract surgeries, she had found the elderly woman sitting, alone, blind from cataracts and afraid to come into the hospital.  

I thought to myself, this is who Seva is. Compassion in action. 

Dr. Yangki-la in Lhasa Tibet

Thank you for joining us in bringing sight and changing lives.

Dr. Ken Bassett
Program Director
Seva Canada

Patient being carried to the Seva eye camp in Humla, Nepal.

From 25-27 September 2011, a Seva eye camp was held in Citta General Hospital in Simikot, the main town in the district of Humla, Nepal.

In just two days, the team examined 700 patients performed 63 sight-restoring eye surgeries. Patients came from far away, some of them walking for 5 days to reach the camp and two patients walked 4 days to receive eye care.

Humla District is in the far northwest corner of Nepal and is one of the poorest and most remote regions of the country. The population of Humla is around 75,000. There are no roads and access to the region is gained only by a small airstrip in the capital, Simikot. In winter, the airport is often blocked due to heavy snowfall.

The eye camp was made possible thanks to generous donors in Canada and due to the hard work of Dr. Larry Louie, his wife Joanna Wong, and Wanda Vivequin — who together organized a special event and film show in Edmonton.

The eye care equipment and supplies for the surgical eye camp in Humla, Nepal stacked up at the airport in Nepalgunj, including a generator, sterilizing equipment, etc.

Reaching Humla with all the staff and equipment needed to conduct a cataract surgical eye camp is a major undertaking. The Nepali eye camp team started their journey on September 23rd 2011 from the Lumbini Eye Institute in Butawal to Nepalgunj, a 5-hour journey.

The next day the team was at the Nepalgunj airport at 6 a.m. where they waited for 5 hours before being told that all flights to Humla were cancelled due to bad weather. The next day, on September 25th, the team headed back to the airport at dawn. Although the weather was clear, elsewhere in Nepal a Buddha Air flight had crashed and the pilot of the plane to Humla was so upset that he refused to fly that day. On 26 September, at 4:30 a.m. the team received a call telling them to be at the airport at 5 a.m.  and they at last were able to fly to Simikot.

Some of the 700 outpatients waiting for eye care in Simikot, Nepal. Photo courtesy of Joanna Wong.

From the moment the team arrived, they were working with patients. Having lost precious days waiting for a flight, they had only 2 days to complete the camp so they worked steadily from early morning to late evening.

One of the challenges in bringing eye care to poor and remote regions is letting people know that eye care is available. To spread the word in advance of the eye camp, messages about the camp were broadcast 4 times a day for a month through the FM radio station in Simikot, as well as for 7 days through Radio Nepal. Pamphlets were distributed through various channels such as the health post staff, school teachers, students and community leaders. To measure the effectiveness of various publicity vehicles, patients were asked during registration how they had heard about the Simikot Eye Camp and more than 90% of patients learned about the camp via FM radio.

Patients receiving eye care at Seva eye camp in Humla, Nepal. Photo courtesy of Joanna Wong

The eye camp was held at Citta Hospital in Simikot, a clean and well-managed hospital founded by Dr. Yeshe, who grew up in Humla. Dr. Yeshe and his team provided food for all the cataract surgical patients free of charge and also supplied hot water and blankets to all admitted patients. All the staff members of Citta Hospital, Dr. Yeshe and his wife worked as full time as volunteers at the eye camp, along with 6 student volunteers.

Kandel, Seva's program director in Nepal, examining patients in Humla. Photo courtesy of Joanna Wong

Mr. R.P. Kandel, Seva’s Program Manager in Nepal managed the out-patient department and refraction and provision of eye glasses was done by the senior ophthalmic assistant,  Mr. Sanjeev Adhikari.  All patients who had both general health problems AND eye problems were referred to Dr. Yeshe for the treatment of their general health issues. Patients with complicated eye problems were referred to the ophthalmologist for further examination. Reading glasses, medicines and sunglasses were provided free of cost to all the patients who were at the eye camp. Seva donors and volunteers, Clasina van Bemmel and Joanna Wong, were actively involved in the distribution of eye glasses and medicines.

Seva donor and volunteer, Clasina van Bemmel, distributes glasses at a Seva eye camp in Humla, Nepal. Photo courtesy of Joanna Wong

The eye camp was very successful. 700 patients, young and old, were examined and 63 sight-restoring cataract surgeries were performed. All of the patients who had surgery received good vision after their operations. Medicine and spectacles were distributed free of charge and the patients were very happy to receive high-quality reading glasses at no cost.  Many patients received sunglasses and the children were especially happy to have these. Six patients were treated for corneal ulcers at the eye camp, preventing years of blindness and suffering.

The eye camp team members were:
•    Dr. Anil Sherchan,  ophthalmologist (surgeon)
•    Sanjeev Adhikari,  ophthalmic assistant (refraction)
•    Manohar Shrestha, ophthalmic  assistant (minor operating theatre procedures and local anesthesia)
•    Indira Shrestha, ophthalmic assistant (operating theatre assistant)
•    Jangali Kurmi Ninor,  (operating theatre, patient admission,  etc)
•    Bhagawan Choudhary,  (operating theatre helper, sterilization)
•    R.P. Kandel, Seva Program Manager  (patient examination)
•    Clasina van Bemmel, Seva Canada donor and volunteer (helped distributing glasses and eye medicines)
•    Joanna Wong, Seva Canada donor and volunteer (helped distributing glasses and eye medicines, photographer)
•    Mr Raju (volunteer).

Behind the scene, there were many members such as Dr. Yeshe, his wife, and staff working in Citta Hospital and many volunteers who were providing support for the patients.

Some funds were left over after the camp and will be used to fund a similar eye camp in the remote region of Bajhang, adjacent to Humla District.

Glaucoma is increasingly becoming the main cause of blindness. It presents an even greater public health challenge than cataracts, because the blindness it causes is irreversible.

Glaucoma is the condition when rising pressure in eye causes damage to optic nerves that generally begins with a subtle loss of side vision (peripheral vision). The optic nerve receives light-generated nerve impulses from the retina and transmits these to the brain, where we recognise those electrical signals as vision. If glaucoma is not diagnosed and treated, it can progress to loss of central vision and blindness.

There are different types of glaucoma. Most common ones are open angle glaucoma and angle closure glaucoma. Open angle glaucoma is the most common type and is known as ‘silent killer of vision’.

There won’t be any symptoms in the early stage. Moreover, its frequency increases greatly with age. It can be diagnosed by checking the eye pressure.

Angle-closure glaucoma is a less common form of glaucoma. In angle-closure glaucoma, the patient’s intraocular pressure can go up very suddenly (acutely). This sudden pressure increase occurs because the drainage angle becomes closed and blocks off all the drainage channels. This type of glaucoma is more common in far-sighted individuals (Hyperopia).

Patients with open-angle glaucoma in general have no symptoms in the early stage. But later, patients experience eye pain, headache and see halos around light bulb and redness, especially during the night.

Although nerve damage and visual loss from glaucoma cannot usually be reversed, glaucoma can generally be controlled. That is, treatment can make the intraocular pressure normal and, therefore, prevent or retard further nerve damage and visual loss. Treatment for glaucoma involves using eye drops, laser treatment and surgery (optional).

There are several forms of laser therapy for glaucoma. One is laser iridotomy, which involves making a hole in the coloured part of the eye (iris) to allow fluid to drain normally in eyes with narrow or closed angles. Laser trabeculoplasty is a laser procedure performed only in eyes with open angles.
Trabeculectomy is a delicate microsurgical procedure used to treat glaucoma.

It is the most commonly performed glaucoma surgery. Glaucoma shunt devices are artificial drainage devices used to lower eye pressure. This procedure may be performed as an alternative to trabeculectomy in certain types of glaucoma.

Not only are people above 40 years vulnerable to glaucoma, even children are vulnerable to the disease. Early diagnosis and treatment is the key to preserve sight in people with glaucoma. People with a family history of glaucoma, myopia, diabetes and hypertension need periodic eye checkup (at least every 6 months) to avoid unnecessary visual loss.

The writer is Chief Medical Officer with Vasan Eye Care Hospital, Chennai

Nancy Mortifee Seva Board Chair

Norm Grdina from Morrow & Co. provided our auditor’s report and gave Seva the thumbs up. We liked him so much we appointed them for another year as our auditor.

Retiring board member, David Hardouin, was thanked for his wonderful service. He will surely be missed but we’re sure he’ll still be involved and will hopefully drop by the office from time to time.

The other bittersweet farewell was to Paula Ford, our Products Manager who is retiring from Seva in June of 2012. She has been involved with Seva in one way or another for over 25 years. What will we do without her?! Not to worry though, we won’t let her leave without a proper send-off in the spring.

Unfortunately Dr. Mariano Yee from Visualiza Eye Care System, our partner in Guatemala, was unable to make it to the AGM as his visa didn’t arrive in time (just got it today!). Lucky for us, Dr. Marty Spencer, an ophthalmologist in Nanaimo, and a longtime Seva board member was able to fill in and tell us all about his recent trip to Tibet.

Dr. Spencer made the arduous journey to Yushu, a town in eastern Tibet that was devastated by an earthquake in April 2010. An eye camp was being held in Yushu and it was hoped that he could help upgrade the surgical skills of the only cataract surgeon in the city, Dr. Norbu Tzering. Marty gave us his first-hand account of his experience in Yushu along with some amazing photos. To read all about his time in Tibet visit http://bit.ly/tfB4eb

Dr. Marty Spencer, Board Member, sharing his trip to Yushu Tibet

We were also wonderfully entertained by William Jans who shared his eastern Tibetan adventure seeing cataract surgeries at Kham Eye Centre in Dartsedo. William, a talented photographer and avid traveller hosts live presentations about his absurd travels, selling out theatres across Canada. Using humour, music and photography, William, dressed in a Tibetan Khampa (cowboy) hat and Chinese silk jacket, conveyed his experiences including a touching and inspiring story of 3 sisters who all travelled together to have cataract surgery. Stay tuned for William’s new show dates and visit www.wrjphoto.com And thank you to William for taking such great photos of the AGM as you can see in this blog!

William Jans sharing his Tibetan adventure

Penny Lyons, Executive Director, provided an overview of the programs. In case you missed the AGM here are some of the details:

Penny Lyons, Seva Executive Director

FUNDING

Seva has been expanding its funding base so that we are not reliant on any one source. We received a 5-year funding commitment from the Canadian International Development Agency, as well as funding from the Community Initiatives Program (CIP) sponsored by the Alberta Government.

GUATEMALA

Seva has been working with Visualiza, funding their pediatric programs and now will be working to expand their programs to the Department of San Marcos – a very poor area in southwestern Guatemala where very little eye care currently exists.

Laura Spencer, Seva Board Member selling Visualiza fundraising bracelets

TIBET

Seva Tibet is providing eye care services in every Tibetan region of China and has become remarkably good at fundraising – this year alone they’ve received over $80,000 from embassies based in Beijing.

NEPAL

Seva Nepal is intent on reaching every underserved area in western Nepal and in the last 3 months has opened primary eye care centres in two new regions with more in the planning stages.

CAMBODIA

Seva Cambodia, with funding from G Adventures (formerly Gap Adventures) and Planeterra Foundation, are building Cambodia’s first primary eye care centre just south of Battambang in Moung Roussey which will be inaugurated in March. The ultimate plan is to build a new eye hospital there that will serve all of Cambodia’s Northern provinces.

EASTERN AFRICA

Seva is supporting programs in Tanzania, Malawi and Madagascar as well as outreach in Burundi.  A large portion of funding supports outreach and pediatric programs in each of these countries. In Madagascar, Seva donors are creating a nationwide pediatric program from the ground up.

One of the more innovative initiatives that our partner in Africa, the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology, has begun is using existing microfinance networks to help deliver eye care and treatment information to rural communities.  So far, it appears that this program has been so successful that we have sent someone from Africa to Nepal to help implement the program there as well.

INDIA

Aravind Eye Care System in India is establishing Vision Centres throughout Southern India with Seva donor funding – each of which will provide eye care to about 65,000 of India’s rural poor.

Without you, our partners and supporters, Seva wouldn’t be able to do the work that we do, and this year’s AGM was a fantastic way to celebrate our successes, learn about the work that is being done, the work that still needs to be done and to spend some time together. Thank you to all our volunteers for making the AGM such a success. And thank you to all of you that continue to believe in a world in which no one is needlessly blind or visually impaired.

We look forward to celebrating our 30^th Anniversary with all of you in 2012! The first event will be Beyond the Darkness a photo exhibition by Larry Louie an award-winning photographer and Seva Board member.  The exhibit will run from April 23-May 12, 2012 at the HSBC Pendulum Gallery in Vancouver with a reception on April 26^th.  For full details visit www.seva.ca/anniversaryevents.htm

Nepalese Temple photograph by Larry Louie

We hope to see you there!