Himalayan Cataract Project E-News: January 2010Happy New Year! First and foremost, we would like to thank all of our supporters who considered and donated generously in 2009 to the Himalayan Cataract Project. It is only through your support that we are able to carry out this work.
Here you’ll find news of our latest international eye care activities, including:
- Update from HCP projects in West Bengal, India
- Park City Magazine features Dr. Geoff Tabin
- Tilganga co-organizes National Workshop on pediatric eye care
- HCP Board Member receives faculty appointment
- Snowbird event to benefit HCP
HCP in West Bengal, India | | 
Swami Biswanathananda and Dick Litwin with the new brailler that was purchased with HCP support and is used to train partially sighted children to type books in Braille for the totally blind in West Bengal.
|
HCP Board Member Dr. Dick Litwin reflects on a recent visit to the Vivekananda Ashram in West Bengal where HCP is supporting work at a charitable eye hospital.
"I just returned from the Vivekananda Ashram south of Calcutta with my wife Judith. Three years ago we visited their twelve-year old eye hospital where they do 15,000 eye operations every year. They said they were ready to tackle eye banking and corneal transplants for the many fungal ulcers that were blinding agricultural workers. Soon, thanks to HCP, a team from Vivekananda was in Kathmandu at Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology learning corneal transplantation and eye banking from Dr. Sanduk Ruit and Dr. Reeta Gurung. Later a Vivekananda eye surgeon was sent to the Moran Eye Center in Utah to work with Dr. Geoffrey Tabin and his colleagues.
On this recent visit we found a trained and equipped team and a government approved eye bank. Their case load was limited only by the availability of eye donations. The solution? HCP has arranged for a full time "grief councilor" who will be stationed at a large nearby general hospital to encourage the donation of corneas. We have a generous offer of training for the new grief councilor from Dr. G.N. Rao at the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad which collects over 3,000 eyes each year.
The idea for an eye hospital at an Ashram that had previously run a school for 5,000 children, some of whom were partially sighted and some blind, came from Mr. Doraiswamy Nagarajan of Sight Savers in England which provided initial funding. Support over the years has also come from Seva Foundation, Orbis International and Aravind Eye Hospital, where the principal ophthalmologists were trained."
- Dick Litwin, January 2010 National workshop on community level pediatric eye care | | 
Participants in the Pediatric Primary Eye Care Training Curriculum workshop in Kathmandu.
|
In conjunction with the Ministry of Health & Population in Nepal and various national level eye care institutions in the country, Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology recently co-organized and participated in a national workshop on pediatric eye care at the community level. The Vision 2020 National Plan has identified pediatric eye health at the community level as an area in need of attention. The workshop was a direct result and was organized in order to bring interested parties together to discuss strategies for reaching the unreachable patients, to promote pediatric screening and to improve the referral mechanism for abnormal cases by community volunteers. Community volunteers include school teachers, females community health workers and traditional healers, all of whom receive training in primary eye care screening. The workshop drew 64 participants from throughout the country and was made possible through the A2Z USAID Child Blindness and Eye Health Grants Fund, Academy for Educational Development (AED) and the HCP. HCP Board Member Dr. Matt Oliva appointed as clinical faculty Snowbird event to benefit HCP"A Night for Sight" will take place at the Snowbird Renaissance Center in Utah on Saturday, February 27, to benefit the HCP and the Division of International Ophthalmology at the Moran Eye Center. The evening will include a reception, a live and silent auction, dinner and presentations by HCP Co-Director Dr. Geoff Tabin and Erik Weihenmayer, an accomplished climber and world-class adventurer.
Tickets and further information are available on the Snowbird website.
The Himalayan Cataract Project works to eradicate preventable and curable blindness through high quality ophthalmic care, education and the establishment of a world-class eye care infrastructure.
Please visit our Web site at www.cureblindness.org to keep up with the latest HCP news. There you will also find information on HCP’s finances, its founders, staff and board members, and ways that you can give the gift of sight.
Remember, through the Himalayan Cataract Project it takes a gift of only $20 to provide life-changing cataract surgery to someone struggling with blindness in the developing world. |
