On Thursday morning we set off with two senior optometrists from Kathmandu’s Teaching Hospital, Dr Sanjeeb Mishra and Dr Gauri Shankar Shrestha to finally fulfil a promise made to the community of Baruwa in Sindhupalchok, to return and support them in their health care needs by running a free eye camp.
After a long, bumpy and very hot and dusty journey we finally arrived in the late afternoon in time to meet the local team who would support us during the eye camp, check out the facilities at our camp venue – the village health post, set up our tents, stretch our legs and prepare for an early start the following morning.
Despite having been advertised on the local radio as an 8am start, older members of the community were ready and waiting for us by 7am, so after a quick cup of tea we went straight to work.
Drs Sanjeeb and Gauri Shankar set up their stations, briefed their volunteer helpers, measured the correct distance for the visual acuity test and taught the local health assistant how to run the tests, the first phase for everyone’s check-ups.
With most people never having seen an eye doctor before and thus never done a visual acuity test, getting everyone to understand just what they had to do brought much hilarity to the queue. However, as they became more familiar with the routine it all became easier and by 11am we had already registered 81 patients.
Having completed their visual acuity test, they then patiently joined the next queue ready to first see Dr Gauri Shanker who performed anterior and posterior segment examinations on their eyes.
Those that needed further assessment were sent to see Dr Sanjeeb, so he could perform refraction tests for whether they needed reading or prescription glasses and if so, at what power.
This was not a camp for just the older members of the local communities, the younger generation were encouraged to come and get their eyes checked out as well, and the local school kids from the Shree Chandika Secondary School came en masse.
In total our doctors saw 359 patients including 3 gentlemen who after hearing about it on the radio, left home at 5am to walk the 30 km to Baruwa, taking them just over 13 hours! Two were given reading glasses and the oldest, 80 year old Krishna Bahadur Rana Magar was prescribed prescription glasses, which will be dropped off at pre arranged shop in their own village, thus saving them another 60km round trip.
Out of the 359 patients, the doctors saw some pretty interesting cases including macular dystrophy (degeneration of the central retina), retinal detachment, advanced glaucoma, a lady with a divergent squint, bilateral isoametropic amblyopia (lazy eye), a nasty upper lid tumour, Goldenhar Syndrome and a young, 13 year old girl with a whole host of issues such as congenital bilateral cataracts, corectopia (displacement of the pupil), optic atrophy and retinal degeneration. Despite having no sight in the eye with the displaced pupil and very poor and degenerating sight in her other eye, she continues to do her best at school using a monocular that was prescribed for her by Tilganga Eye Hospital to enable her to read her school books.
Alongside the above, 8 operable cataracts were diagnosed and those patients will travel to Kathmandu for free operations that will hopefully restore their sight.
In total we saw 359 patients. 181 men and 178 women. Of these 229 were adults and 130 children (16 & under). The oldest patient we saw was 90 years old, the youngest just 11 months. 37 sets of prescription glasses were prescribed and 76 pairs of reading glasses given out.
A Himalayan thank you to all our donors for enabling us to take this much needed service to the beautiful, remote and poor village of Baruwa. To Dr Sanjeeb Mishra and Dr Gauri Shankar Shrestha for giving up their valuable time to help in this remote location. To Baruwa health post and its staff and also to Gelbow Samden, the headmaster at Shree Chandika School for giving up his time to help and for encouraging the children under his care to come and have their eyes checked. Finally to our main man in Baruwa, 35 year old Pasang Tamang who has just been elected as Ward President for his region in the first local elections to be held in over 20 years. Without his support and hard work within the community this free eye camp would never have happened and would not have been the wonderful success it was.
We hope to return towards the end of the year to run a dental camp at the request of the villagers and community members.