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Dr. Ifeoma Ezekwo with Mr. Sam Ezekwo in the Lima town square. |
Global Eye Care Restores Eyesight in Remote Peru
Team overcomes major bureaucratic obstacles to success
Last
February, Global Eye Care’s doctors went on the road to South America,
this time to Peru, to provide cataract relief to the needy people in Chimbote,
a town on the Pacific coast. Chimbote is a small fishing town that has
the distinction of having two hospitals, one large and one smaller, that
serve a large area. The larger of the two hospitals has a poorly equipped
ophthalmology clinic that served as ground zero for the doctors’
work.
After many delays and confusion
caused by bureaucratic snafus, the Global Eye Care team arrived on a Saturday
evening and wasted no time setting up. By the following Monday morning,
they were performing their first cataract surgery.
It’s
Not As Easy As It Looks
For those on the Peru
mission, the hardest part of the trip may not have been performing the
record number of successful surgeries, but the process of getting the
equipment and people to a specific location. For nearly three months,
Global Eye Care worked closely with Peru’s Minister of Health and
other officials to get permission to enter the country.
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Global
Eye Care volunteers Dr. Richard Lepie and his daughter, Lara, are
shown appreciation by one of the many patients cured of blindness
during the mission.
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| Our team of surgeons and support staff from our Peru mission say “hello.” |
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| Dr. Ezekwo prepares one of the 127 Peruvian cataract patients for surgery. |
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| More members of our Peruvian team sporting special Peru Eye Camp T-shirts generously supplied by Chimbote Regional Hospital. |
The
Peru trip was full of reasons to abort the mission. First, there was the
need just to get government approval to enter the country with the sophisticated
medical equipment required to perform these important sight-saving surgeries.
Timing is always important.
In the weeks leading up to the team’s arrival, Peru was in the middle
of an election, and there was much political turmoil, both on a national
and local level. In fact, there was so much upheaval that the team almost
canceled the trip a few days before departure.
Internal
challenges in Peru made it impossible to bring into the country certain
medical items that were considered a routine part of past missions. Even
some carry-on items and properly shipped cargo were not allowed.
The customs and other local
disruptions resulted in an entire day spent at the customs office in Peru
just trying to get clearance for the supplies and equipment.
The customs challenges also
caused Global Eye Care president, Dr. Ifeoma Ezekwo to miss a Saturday
reception that was attended by several local dignitaries.
While in Peru, the team conducted
a cataract prevention program that included gifts of caps with visors,
sunglasses and multivitamins to 1,000 local citizens.
Eye
Surgery, Anyone?
Readers of past newsletters
may recall that our June 2000 mission to Namibia posed certain medical
challenges to the team. Not so in Peru. Due in part to a diet rich in
fish and the humid weather, there were far fewer pathologies of the cornea
than in Namibia, and most of the cataract surgeries were easier to perform.
In general, residents in Peru are more nutritionally balanced.
Prior to the arrival of the
Global Eye Care team, local residents were informed of the opportunity
to receive free cataract surgery. In Chimbote, for example, there is a
village square frequented by a community leader who let the villagers
know that help was on the way.
Patients were instructed to
go to the hospital to get a card that authorized an examination to determine
the candidates suitable for surgery. Some of the patients lived far from
Chimbote and traveled by bus for as long as six hours.
For such an important surgery,
the procedure and the recovery are rather swift. Following the 15-minute
surgery, each patient wears a patch over the eye. After one night away
from the hospital, the patient returns to have the patch removed. Once
the patch is removed, results are "seen" immediately, and eyedrops
are used to assist the healing process.
In all, the Peru team performed
127 sight-saving surgeries. Truly remarkable, given the conditions and
distractions of the land.
