Research

Unite for Sight offers volunteers the opportunity to do research while abroad as part of their global impact initiative. Brayden is very interested in doing research in Optometry school and jumped on this chance to get started early. From their website, Unite for Sight explains that "there are few published studies about eye care in developing countries, and Unite For Sight encourages all volunteers to consider developing a research study to contribute important knowledge about global eye care needs and solutions." After expressing interest in pursuing a research topic with UFS, the research topic that they would like completed focuses on patient perceptions of eye disease and medical care; what they believe are the causes of various eye problems, etc. This also includes demographic information. In India, Dr. Sinha explains that illiteracy (especially health illiteracy) along with other factors (like poverty etc.) prove to be barriers to seeking preventable treatment for blindness. This research would be a foundational study so that health education programs could be established to educate patients on diseases and treatments to overcome barriers to health care.

In order to get started, the research model must be approved by the IRB at the Unviersity of Utah. Brayden is soliciting the  aid of his former research professor Dr. Nick Galli from the department of Health Promotion and Education. While in India, the research will most likely be collected using a survey format with the help of a translator.


When completed, the research can be presented at Unite for Sight's annual Global Impact Conference and perhaps published in a journal for further research on patient education and overcoming barriers to health care.

More Glasses

We have continued working on quest to collect 1,000 pairs of glasses. We have 400 confirmed from New Eyes for the Needy that will be delivered in February, and we were able to sort out about 170 pairs from the donations gathered by the Bountiful chapter of the Lion's Club. Earlier this week, we spoke with the president of the Riverdale Chapter of the Lion's Club, who told us they had thousands of pairs available that we were welcome to sort through!
Today, Laura had the chance to meet George, with the Riverdale chapter, who helped us out with 5 nice boxes full of glasses. He was very pleasant and was interested in what we were doing with the glasses. After explaining the purpose of our trip, he asked us to call him when we returned from India. He invited us to come speak to the Riverdale chapter of the Lion's Club and tell them about our experience and where the glasses went. We are excited of getting to share with some of our gracious donors where their contributions went and the people whose lives they have touched.

Some fun random facts about Bihar:
*The name Bihar comes from the world "Vihara" meaning Buddhist monasteries. At one time, viharas filled the large countryside adn cities of Bihar. 

An ancient Vihara in Bihar

*The capital city of Patna was once known as Patliputra. Patliputra was home to a string of Indian monarchs that ruled over much of the Indian-subcontinent and had an empire that reached as far as Iran.

* Lord Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, was born in Bihar. 

A statue of Lord Mahavira, founder of Jainism

New Video and Update

We are happy to report today that thanks to your donations, we are almost 50% of the way to our goal of 64 sight restoring surgeries. To date, the donations will go towards 30 surgeries at the AB Eye Institute and it's rural satellite clinics! Thank you so much to those who have donated and continue to follow this blog and support this endeavor!

We have added a new video to welcome everyone who visits the blog. This video is quite a bit longer than the old volunteer video (you can still watch it below), but we feel that it really captures the vision of what the Sinha family and the AB Eye Institute, along with Unite for Sight are doing to combat poverty, health illiteracy, and good health care. Take a moment and watch what these amazing people are doing. We fell in love with this family, clinic, and culture right away and are sure that you will too!

Visa, Insurance & Embassy

The past couple nights we have been working away on our Indian Visa applications, phew, they sure want to know a lot before letting you into their country! We also got international security coverage and medical assistance insurance, fun stuff! We are hoping that prepardness pays off, meaning we won't actually have to use any of them, but its nice to know that if something does go wrong we can get the help we need. (at least up to $50,000 incurred while abroad, and if its more than that, I don't even want to think about what has happened to us! :) We also registered with the US embassy in India. All in all, lots of forms to fill out, but it should hopefully help us be safe and accounted for on our trip.

For today's fun fact about Bihar India, we turn to focustoindia.com, which profiles the different provinces in India. We thought it would be interesting to learn a little more about the religions found in Bihar and found the following:

The greatest influence on Bihari culture would have to be religion. Like most other states in India, there is a wide array of religions that call Bihar home. Though Hinduism is the prevailing religion of the people of Bihar now, ancient Bihar (known as Magadh) was a major center of Buddhist civilization, and Jainism found its start in Bihar. During medieval times, Islam and Sikhism thrived; British colonizers brought Christianity to the people of Bihar. As a result, Bihar is full of temples, mosques, and churches, all of which are major centers for their community. Reflective of the Hindu majority, the largest celebrations in Bihar are for Hindu observances, such as Holi, Raksh Bandhan, Deepawali (or Diwali), and Janmashtami. Of course, the holidays of Bihar's many other religions are celebrated as well.


The pictures below are from the Hindu holiday "Holi," also called the Festival of Colors. To celebrate, individuals throw colored dust and colored water at each other. Looks like a lot of fun to do and not so fun to clean up!

The A.B. Eye Institute

 

http://www.abei.eyemd.org/

Our volunteer work in India will take place at the A.B. Eye Institute founded by the Sinha family in 1975. Dr. Ajit Sinha (Father), Dr. Satyajit Sinha (Son) and Dr. Pooja Sinha (Dr. Satyajit Sinha's wife) are all ophthalmologists who use their individual specialties to provide comprehensive eye care to the people of Bihar India.

As we looked at what location that we wanted to volunteer with, we became very touched and impressed by this entire family who devotes their skills to under served populations. The family of ophthalmologists run their practice in Patna 6 days a week from 9-3pm and then head to various satellite clinics in rural villages from 4-8pm. Not only does this family care for this clinic, but they also started and oversee a school for blind girls. This school provides room and board, meals, clothing and education free of charge so that blindness does not become a stumbling block for the girls' future.

We are excited to be able to work with the Sinha family and thrilled to be able to learn from them and help the people of Bihar India.

New Language!

While we are working at the A. B. Eye Institute, we will be screening people from rural villages who do not speak English. In order to effectively communicate and best help each patient, it will be useful to know some basic Indian words. Let's see how good you are at pronouncing them!

Okay/Right/                            GppdThik Hai

I don't know                            Muje maloom nahee

Please sit here                         Kripya yana in baithiye

Look straight ahead                Sidha dekho

How many fingers                  Kinti Unglai Hai

Is this better                            Abbi sab hai

This is better                           Ki Abbi saf Hai

Cover your eye                       Band kijiye

Right eye                                Dahini ankh

Left eye                                  Bayan ankh

1                                             Ek

2                                             Do

3                                             Tin

4                                             Char

5                                             Panch

Up                                          Upar

Down                                     Niche

Name                                     Aap ka nam kya hai

Age                                        Aap ka umra kya hai

Complaints of Defective

vision for distance or near     Door ka dikkat Hai Ya da nasdique ka

Watering                                Aankh se pani girta hai

Sticky Discharge                   Aankh se kicher aata hai

Foreign body sensation         Aankh me kuchh garta haiItching Aankh nochta hai

Redness                                 Aankh lal hai

Eyeache                                 Aankh dard karta hai

Headache                               Sir matha Dard Karta Hai

Flashes or Floaters                Aankh kea age kuchh chamakta hai

Shadow in front of eye         Aankh ke samne duhndula kikhta hai

History of                              Chini ki bimari hai

Diabetes

Blood pressure

Any injury to the eye            Annkh me koi chot lagi hai

Any medication used

for long period                      Skoi tarah ki dava aap lambe samay se lete hai

Any history of previous

surgery in the eye                  Koi tarah ka opration aankh me huva hai

Sort and Clean

Tonight we started sorting and cleaning the glasses we have been collecting. A few days ago we picked up 4 big boxes of glasses from the Lion's Club rep and we got to work. It was pretty interesting to go through pair after pair, Brayden at the lensometer reading prescriptions, and Laura cleaning them afterward.

Unite for Sight asked for reading glasses and sunglasses, but no bifocals or glasses with mixed prescriptions or astigmatism correction. This complicated things, luckily this is part of what Brayden does for a living for now as an optician, so that made it easy! At first it was kind of a bummer to see all the 'reject' glasses we can't take with us, but as our pile of glasses we can take got bigger, we were glad to see ourselves getting closer to our goal of 1000 pairs!

It was fun to see the different styles and varieties of glasses. We are pretty sure there was one classy lady who donated at least 7 pairs of very fancy reading glasses, the kind that fold out and have a lovely handle instead of temple pieces. We can't wait to find a group of similarly classy ladies in India who are going to love these! Laura just had to model a pair for your enjoyment.

There was a cool moment when we looked at our cleaning rag and realized it was made in India! There's some circularity for you! It's a small world after all...

Turns out that a lot of people wanted the benefactors to know where their glasses came from. We even got treated to a written description as well as photos displaying the man wearing his glasses. Congratulations college graduate! (wonder what year!) Gold star for whoever can identify what kind of car is shown behind him! It was pretty fun to see this mixed in with bunch of glasses, made the donation a little more personal.

As of today, we are up to sponsoring 15 of our goal of 64 cataract surgeries! Thanks everyone! We're excited to be getting more people involved, thanks to everyone who has helped spread the word about what we're doing with Unite for Sight. Oh, and Happy 2010! Here's to the new year!