Fudem

Yes, that is a real word, although I have no idea what it means. It may be an acronym, I don't know.   But Fudem is one of HELP's non-profit partner organizations in El Salvador.  If you speak Spanish, you can check out their website here.  But if you don't, I will give you the basic rundown . . .

They are mostly focused on vision, but are breaking in the area of dental health as well (that's another story.)  They have vision clinics in two major cities in El Salvador (and are building a third) where they have optometrists and opthamologists.  They provide glasses and do surgeries.  Their facilities are VERY nice for El Salvador.  Anyone can come to the clinic and they pay for their services according to their means.  Those who are able to pay full price help to subsidize the cost of the ones who can't. One of the main things that makes them unique though, is that they do outreach clinics everyday.  They do visual acuity testing and eye screening in schools and communities all over the country.  They are well-known for what they do and the numbers they have served, I would guess, are well into the hundreds of thousands.

What the HELP volunteers are doing with them this year is two-fold.  We volunteer with them at their outreach clinics, allowing them to speed the process and see more people in one day.  And we are also working with them on putting together educational materials - how to care for your glasses, how to avoid eye infections and how to treat it if it occurs, how to identify vision problems in children, etc. 

I got to visit their San Salvador clinic while I was there and I got to participate in an outreach clinic.  We even got sweet orange t-shirts to wear (too bad they only had XLs).  The clinic we helped with was a follow up at a school where they had gone and tested all 600+ kids a couple days before.  Now, the children who were referred for glasses or something further were to come with their parents.  The parents, other family, or really any community members could come on this day to be screened and tested as well.  I helped with the registration and with the visual acuity.  Another one of our volunteers was taught to use the autorefracter, which I think checks for cataracts?

A couple of interesting things I saw while doing this.  One, there were not nearly as many vision problems there that day as I had see when did the same thing last year in Uganda.  And most people could at least read the letters on the chart, whereas many people in Uganda last summer could not.  And two, I couldn't believe how many kids that were coming back for glasses could hardly read the top large letters.  And some of them looked like they were about 11 or 12.  How had they survived in school this long?!  How were they possibly learning?!  I was so happy that they would leave that day being able to see!

Eye Camp

The first project I got to participate in was one they called "Eye Camp". One of our amazing volunteers had worked hard for weeks to put this together, and this was the first day of it. How lucky I was to be there! We (as in HELP International) partnered with an organization called Sight Savers to do a series of outreach eye clinic days in various small villages around Lugazi. I think there were a total of 14 over about 8 days. It was free to anyone who came and they received vision testing, glasses and/or medication if necessary, and some were approved for surgery which will be provided at Kawolo hospital by Sight Savers doctors. Most of the surgeries were for cataracts, which is easily treatable. We will be providing the transportation to and from the hospital and food for them while they are there.

Simple, yet totally life changing for these people. I can't believe how many of them had been living with extremely poor vision or couldn't see at all out of one eye or both. Also, many of the people suffered from severe allergies that could be helped by a simple bottle of eye drops. I wondered how long they had just simply dealt with these things. Most of these people cannot afford the 25 cents for the bus to the clinic, let alone the cost of a doctor's visit.

Waiting for their turn . . .

When we arrived there were people who had been waiting since 7am. By the time we got started more and more were gathering. That day, we ended up screening over 130 people. When I left Uganda, our volunteers had helped over 1000 people and had 70+ surgeries scheduled. I was so proud of the time, effort and collaboration that went into this and glad that I could participate for the short time I had.