Gone Camping...

As I've discussed previously, one of the missions of Aravind is to ensure that all patients who require it receive eye care, regardless of their ability to pay. One of the way that Aravind achieves this goal is to conduct multiple "camps" every week. Yesterday, I went to one of those camps about an hour and a half from the hospital to see what happens there.

Think of the camps as massive screening programs for people with eye disease. Local sponsors (in this case, the Lions club of the agricultural community where we were) advertise to the people. Two of the organizers were local general physicians (who see 80-100 patients per day) who told the patients who needed to see us to come. Patients travelled from multiple towns in the area. Some of them required hours of travel to get to us. They all came because they--or someone in their family--required eye care. This particular camp was held in a marriage hall which was donated for the occasion.

Patients lining up to be seen:

The patients come in and then they are each sent to every station present: one to test vision, one for refraction, another for intraocular pressure testing, a fourth for blood pressure, a fifth for vision testing. The people conducting the camps are efficient (notice a trend with Aravind yet?). There were fourteen sisters, two ophthalmology interns (first year residents) and one second year ophthalmology resident to do all the screenings. In about four hours, they saw 332 patients (Aravind is also remarkably good at record keeping). The sisters managed most of the stations and the residents managed one. Everyone who walked in the door had to see a resident. Through the miracle of mathematics, you can see that each resident had to screen about one patient every two minutes.

BP check:

Vision check:

IOP check:

Refraction:

The senior resident (in red, center) examining a patient:

Frankly, the three residents were swamped. They each had a chair on either side, with a huge line leading to each chair. They would examine the patient on their left, then right and back again. There was a never-ending deluge of patients the entire time we were there. The residents had to make assessments about ophthalmologic conditions and the potential for successful eye surgeries in 1-2 minutes. I'm not sure how they did it. I was extremely impressed by how many patients they were able to screen.

Patients who need glasses get them (for free) either made on site or couriered out to them because Aravind determined that just giving patients a prescription often meant that those patients would go without glasses. The residents were predominantly screening for cataracts. They gave out eye drops to some patients who needed them but otherwise recommended that people who came for problems other than cataracts come to Aravind on their own.

For patients who needed cataract surgery, however, two busses came to take them to Aravind for free-of-charge eye surgery. In most camps, 25-40% of patients are transported to Aravind, and this camp wasn't much different. Approximately 140 patients were transported. After their surgeries, the patients will be transported back to this location.

The bus:

I mostly observed and talked with the few English speakers among the organizers. I did manage to make friends with one of the men doing crowd control. He didn't speak English and I didn't speak Tamil, but we came to an understanding. He asked me to take this picture before we left:

Tomorrow, I'll try to find time to write about my first experience watching cricket: England vs. India in the world cup on TV (with Mike, two Brits and an Indian). I'll also talk about one of the side projects one the new up-and-coming leaders at Aravind (curiously, his name is Dr. Aravind) is working on.