Cataract Chronicles-25 years
As I celebrate my 25th year volunteering as an eye surgeon in Southeast Asia. I am delighted to share photos and stories about the vision challenges and the people and cultures of India, Nepal, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. - Dr. Gary Barth
Chronicle 38 - Access to Blindness Restoration: Rich and Poor Alike
One of the key principles of our charity cataract eye surgery is that the patient's financial status does not influence access. The decision to perform the surgery is solely based on the patient’s visual needs, ensuring that everyone, rich or poor, has equal access to blindness restoration.
According to my friend and dialect-speaking outreach worker, Gurunath, this rural Indian woman had not left her hut for six months.
She couldn’t see anything and walked with the walking stick in the photo that she put down six inches at a time.
This is my all-time favorite photo because it shows her enormous dignity and bearing. Although she is poor with opaque white cataracts, her comportment and posture tell a different story.
The day after surgery, I marveled as I watched her walk unaided. I was quite elated.
The fellow on the right is a post-cataract surgery Nepali patient from the Himalayan foothills near the small city of Dadeldhura. He had the money for cataract surgery but not the geographic access. The nearest eye hospital was more than 4 hours away on a difficult mountainous road. He was thrilled to have a mobile cataract surgery camp come to his city.
