Nekemte and Bahir Dar Mission 2006-2008
Fighting blindness in Ethiopia was started in 2006 by a group of voluntary ophthalmic doctors and nurses. With the coordination of some eye clinics in the country we managed to get patients screened before the team arrived on site. The first mission was to northwest of the country called Bahirdar.
Even though there were four surgeons shortage of equipments and operating microscope limited our work to the minimum.
We tried our very best and only operated on 148 patients within five days. It was a drop in a ocean but still some got their sight. We are determined to what we can possibly can to help reduce these huge
number of eye diseases even though we can not help everybody. We pledged to go back every year and operate as much as we can by moving around the country since these eye disease are all over.
In 2007 we moved to the western part of the country to a town called Nekemte. Amazingly the number of patients waiting to be seen was just as much as we had seen in the northwest at Bahirdar. We were determined to make a maximum amount of operations but a public holiday has interrupted one day of work. Instead of five days we only operated on four days. This was very disappointing for the team as we had planned to operate 200+ but only managed 172 patients. Part of our mission is to train future eye doctors and nurses we have taken some samples of eye diseases in this area for teaching. In this second trip to Ethiopia the four doctors gave lectures to ophthalmic trainees for four hours. We hope this will continue as we go back and forth in our eye camp.
Our third mission was to the same place (Nekemte) Wellega for two main reasons. A. there is no eye services in this area so we want to give them further opportunity. B. we wanted a follow up of those patients we had done last year. One good thing which came out of this trip was that we eliminated the mistake we had made last time. Therefore our mission was very successful. We operated 257 patients within five days that was a great achievement for the mission. It was also great delight for our supporters when they got to know how many people have been helped with their gift of money.
We want thank all those individuals and organisations for their donation of money and material, and those who also helped us get cheaper materials from other countries. Because of all these helps one patient can be treated for cataract with less than £100.00. that is including all the transport of staff there and back staff accommodation and food refreshments The team have built up some 8 cataract set instruments and we have also bought one mobile ophthalmic microscope to our name. We are hoping to buy at least two more microscope and some more instruments.
Every trip will cost us an average of £12,000.00 with extra supplies given materials by UK hospitals free of charges. If we buy everything we take our expense would be even higher than £15,000.00, therefore we are very grateful and want to say thank you on behalf of those blind rural Ethiopian people.
Thank you for your help!