Post by Penny Lyons, Executive Director, Seva Canada After 40 hours travel time, tired, needing a shower, we landed in the chaos that is Kathmandu. Four boxes of delicate ophthalmology instruments donated by a Vancouver ophthalmologist make it through customs without question, but the duffel bag carrying hundreds of pairs of donated sunglasses from Mountain Equipment Coop for post-operative cataract patients, ultimately destined for Tibet, was denied entry. Shravan, Seva Nepal’s logistics genius, isn’t concerned; he says he will liberate the sunglasses within a day or two – I don’t ask how.

4 boxes of eye care equipment donated by ophthalmologist, Dr Jesse Chew, and one bag of sunglasses from MEC for Tibet are shipped to Nepal free of charge thanks to the generosity of Cathay Pacific.

It has been 3 years since I visited the Nepal programs and I am fortunate this time to be travelling with Chundak Tenzing, Seva Foundation’s program manager, Ken Bassett, Seva Canada’s program manager, and Ram Prasad Kandel, Seva Nepal’s program manager. Program plans for the next year will be coordinated over the next week and current programs will be assessed and evaluated. Each eye care centre we visit will present their data – how many outpatient visits, how many surgeries and what kind, how many women and how many men, how many children were treated and the outcomes of all the surgeries. They will tell us what has worked and what hasn’t, what they need to do their jobs better and all are focused on ensuring the rural poor of Nepal get the services they need. Joining us on this trip is Susan Erdmann, Seva Canada board member. She has travelled to Nepal many times to record Seva’s work with her camera and with the stories she gathers from the patients. She always pays her own way and once back in Vancouver will work tirelessly to tell the stories and show the photos of those who have been helped by Seva’s work. Annie Chen, Seva’s Office Manager, is also with us to assist the program partners with their financial reporting so that we can report back effectively to our donors and funders. We spent only 36 hours in Kathmandu before boarding a small plane to Dhangadhi in far west Nepal. To the right of the plane there are huge mountains poking through the clouds to the north and the flat Terai to the south. Our partner in Dhanghadi, the Geta Eye Hospital, is located between the plains and the hills of far west Nepal and serves both. Geta Eye Hospital was originally built by a Norwegian eye care group but now, as it seeks to serve smaller and remote areas throughout far west Nepal, it needs Seva’s support.

A Nepali man after cataract surgery at a eye camp organized by Seva and geta Eye Hospital. Photo by Susan Erdmnann

The hospital is built in a forest outside of town and is an oasis of calm. Patients and their families come to the hospital and set up camp under the trees – preparing their food, looking after their children and washing their clothes while they wait for their loved ones to be treated and released. It looks and feels much more like a village than a hospital as was the intention of the people who built it. Most staff live on site which adds to the village feel. Two spotted deer have moved onto the grounds and they graze beside the cooking fires and the playing children. A family of monkeys has also taken up residence, but they are less loved as they steal food and the shiny cooking pots. The director of the hospital, Dr. Pant, is delighted we have visited. He has great plans for the hospital and talks at length about the areas of far west Nepal that have no eye care at all – something he is determined to change. Seva donors have funded three primary eye care centres in far west Nepal, but at least two more are desperately needed. Our donors also bought a bus for the hospital so eye care teams can travel to remote areas to conduct cataract surgical and screening camps and bring patients who require further care back to the hospital. There is little transportation available in the area and most of the patients are too poor to use it. The bus will ensure patients don’t have to walk 3 or 4 days to receive care which is often too late to save or repair a damaged eye. Nepal’s eye care community is relatively small and well known to each other, so this visit was a homecoming for Dr. Chundak who worked here 20 years ago and for Kandel who went to school with Dr. Pant and others on staff. There was a lot of storytelling over meals, much laughter, much discussion of plans and needs and dreams for the future of eye care in Nepal. We all felt privileged to be a part of this and grateful for the opportunity to work with Geta Eye Hospital.