Cataract Chronicles-25 years
As I celebrate my 25th year volunteering as an eye surgeon in Southeast Asia. I am delighted to share photos and stories about the vision challenges and the people and cultures of India, Nepal, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. - Dr. Gary Barth
Chronicle 1 - Getting Started
Many have asked: How did you get started doing charity cataract trips to Southeast Asia?
Chronicle 2 - Dr. Barth's Upside-Down Start to Asia Charity Work
At age 20, I went to India for a Williams College-sponsored semester of Indian Art and Religion. During the five months, I witnessed so much blindness that I redirected my studies to medicine.
Chronicle 3 - 100 Cataract/Implant Surgeries a Day in a Classroom?
The Setting: Tikapur High School Yard, Nepal. A surgical team in four-wheel drives took a three-hour trip from the city of Dhangadhi to a high school site for a large cataract surgery camp.
Chronicle 4 - Large Cataract Eye Camps 1999
In 1999, I joined the Prasad Project as the youngest eye surgeon in a group that intended to do 300 cataract surgeries a day for four days. The advanced team had cleaned out a rural Indian factory floor to make it safe for eye surgery.
Chronicle 5 - Blind Indian Woman Nearly Alone in Nepal
The setting: Geta Eye Hospital grounds in Southwest Nepal. One morning, when we were not doing surgery, I ventured forth with my camera to try to capture the lives of the hundreds of patients and family members sleeping and staying in the enclosed courtyard around the charity eye hospital.
Chronicle 6 - Emphasizing Primary Eye Care Clinics PECC & Founding the BBH Eye Foundation
Among the many innovative activities of Seva Foundation, the Board has emphasized bringing ophthalmic services to rural communities. These clinics are called Primary Eye Care Clinics since they provide refractions, ocular first aid, and glasses fabrication/dispensing. They are linked to “Secondary Eye Care Hospitals, " which can perform excellent free cataract surgery.
Chronicle 7 - Keratoconus-Induced Irregular Astigmatism. A California Corneal Transplant Tissue Donor Allowed Her to Return to School
I founded and was the Medical Director of a Corneal Transplant Eye Bank in Santa Rosa. The Medical Director of Seva Foundation Chundak Tenzing asked me to help complete the training cycle for this yet-to-be-launched corneal transplant program in Western Nepal. In the two-thirds of the country west of Kathmandu, there were no corneal transplant services.
Chronicle 8 - Respecting Local Traditions in a Western Operating Room
Has anyone ever seen flowers and garlands in an operating room? There is an excellent reason that the answer is no—-it is impossible to sterilize flowers. This photo shows a “blessing” at the “auspicious hour.” Our PRASAD surgical team waited to start our day of 300 free cataract surgeries. The surgeons and nurses had been standing quite a while, fully scrubbed, gowned, and gloved, waiting for the Brahmin priest and his entourage to bless each of the five operating microscopes with flower garlands.
Chronicle 9 - Memorial of Unfathomable Suffering: Not Intended for Tourists
One afternoon in Cambodia, my wife and I left the eye clinic in the city of Battambang and walked to a Buddhist monastery in a forest. Full disclosure: I lived at the San Francisco Zen Buddhist Center, where I rented a typewriter(sic) and applied to medical school. I cherish monastic communities.
