India Rotary Moment

Everywhere we turned it was something new to us.  Every moment saw us on sensory overload.  Every view was a photo-op.  The sights, the smells, the food, the people, the traffic were all to be remembered, but most of all the friendship and cordiality of our hosts gave us multiple Rotary moments.  Considering all the things we learned and experienced in India, learning about the service and activities of the Rotary clubs were without a doubt the highlight Rotary Moment.

My fellow Rotarian from Iola, Bob Hawk and I-along with Bob’s grandson, Chase Vaughn, were invited to visit India to demonstrate how to make low cost reading spectacles.  We call the project, Vision Quest International.  The Iola Rotary club started the Vision Quest International  Foundation several years ago as an outgrowth and adjunct of our VOSH project to take donated glasses to third world countries.  The Vision Quest International Foundation seeks to promote and educate about correction of Refractive Error Blindness and to distribute, world wide, a kit containing the materials and equipment to make inexpensive reading glasses.

Our experience in India was certainly an enlightening Rotary experience as, we learned of the great needs of the country, of Rotary service, and our Rotary hosts learned how the kit could help people in their country.
We found exemplary Rotary service and organization, in the Calcutta area, with our hosts and their associate clubs.  We found their crowning achievements to be the multitude of eye hospitals, which filled a vacuum as public services to provide the same, are unavailable.  These eye hospitals serve as sustaining models of eye care and do so, with Rotary grants, at no charge to the patient.  They are able to provide at a cost of $25 US or less, cataract removal and implant surgery.  The eye hospitals also provide the gamut of other eye diagnosis and procedures, as well as spectacle vendors who provide reading glasses.  The surgeons and optometrists at the clinics are salaried employees, paid by the fees and grants from Rotary and other sources.   The examinations and surgeries we observed confirmed that these professionals are well trained and highly skilled. 

The Rotarians in the area, I think because the need is so visible, also are involved in drilling water wells, providing vocational training, supporting dental clinics, providing micro-credit loans, making and providing at no cost artificial limbs (they have designated Calcutta-a crutch free zone), and in the wrap up efforts to eradicate polio, as well as a host of other service activities. 

The six eye hospitals that we visited, similar to others supported by other Rotary districts and other Non-Governmental Organizations, also provide outreach services: eye camps-where the staff travels to a distance village to screen patients.  These camps screen tens of thousands of patients per year.  Those with cataracts, are provided with transportation to and from, as well as lodging at the hospitals, and as well, of course, the implant surgery.  Post Cataract surgery follow up is accomplished by the traveling staff.  Cataracts, in India, seem to be of very high, incidence.  Whether, it’s the closeness to the equator and exposure to sun, the inadequacies of the diet, or a genetic predisposition of Indians to cataract, the incidence is very high.  Women seem to have a disproportionate incidence which has given some authorities to speculate that cooking conditions and the attendant exposure to smoke may increase the incidence. 

The Rotary Eye hospital system, as I have indicated, is a beautiful example, of how Rotary can and should work.  It is a beautiful example for sustainable eye care services. 

However, if you are screened, at one of the eye camps, do not have cataracts, but have refractive error conditions, there is NO TREATMENT.
It may be unlikely that you can obtain glasses, as 40% of the Indian population lives on less than $10/month.  For those with any kind of need for close range vision, FORGET  IT!   While compared with the great loss of vision from cataract blindness, refractive error blindness may be minor but given the huge numbers it has grave social implications: 40% of the 1.2 billion people in India are presbyopes.  Even if 10% of the 480 million presbyopes in India are unable to get glasses, you still have 48 million people without glasses correction from presbyopia alone.
We know that refractive error blindness affects efficiency in reading and learning, that it affects personality development, it affects education and job choices, it affects earning power and standard of living.  We know that after age 40, 100% of the population is bothered in some form or another. 

Unlike many medical conditions, Refractive Error Blindness has a solution; it’s a matter of getting the right materials to the right person at the right price.   And statistics show that 60-65% of the population can be helped with reading glasses. 

That is why, our Rotarian friends in India, recognized and seized upon the opportunity to use our Vision Quest project to further help their people.  Our Vision Quest project makes glasses out of a stainless steel wire, looking much like a bicycle spoke.  It contains a bending jig, made of a 2x4 with cutting groves, bending nails; a needle nose pliers, and rudimentary hack saw and lenses.  The frame and temples are constructed and assembled using the bending apparatus.   The lenses are cut in two, sanded for edge smoothness, notched and mounted it the frame.  The process takes about 15 minutes and can be learned rather quickly.  They cost less than 50 cents US.
Further, it contains a rudimentary testing device which can determine, the lens power that should be inserted into the frame. 

We take much for granted in the USA.  We fail to realize the abject poverty and the lack of basis services that many in the world are faced with daily.  We fail to understand how hopeless some feel.  A project that improves efficiency for taking out splinters, threading a needle, making a livelihood with crafts, having a job involving accounting, bookwork or repair, not to mention learning or studying, is truly needed.  It can be a great blessing for those that have no eye care.  If you want to relate to how these people are handicapped, take your glasses and those of your family and throw them away and give up hope of replacing them in a span of some years.  You will know that it takes extraordinary concentration to achieve much of significance. You will know the headaches and eye strain that you face.

PowerPoint of the India Rotary Moment. This is a large file and may take several minutes to download. 

Respectfully submitted by:

C. Ellis Potter, OD.
Past District Governor
Rotary District 6110
Iola Rotary Club