Summarised from the magazine of Christ Church, Winchester, where Tom and Hilary Cope are mission partners. They are awaiting visas to go to live and work in Karachi in Pakistan. Tom is to teach at St. Thomas' Theological College and Hilary is to assist in the Eye Training Mobile Programme of Marie Adelaide Leprosy and Eye Community Centre, both in Karachi and Baluchistan. They ask for your prayers for the granting of their visas.
I left Heathrow, together with John, an eye surgeon, for 3 weeks of Eye Camp work in Baluchistan, Pakistan. We arrived at Karachi in Pakistan and the following day we flew on to Turbat in Baluchistan. We had had very little sleep but collected the mobile eye camp equipment, were joined by the local team and set off crammed like sardines in a tin on a very rough journey into the desert. The desert was very arid, stony and sandy and we were all covered in sand. My hair was caked with it. We took six and a half hours to reach Awaran. It is in a remote area and the people have so little, even of the necessities of life. The animals seem to have next to nothing to graze off.
Outpatients Department (OPD) was crowded with patients all desperately wanting to be seen and helped. The flies also seemed to be desperate to be seen!! We spent a great deal of our time in the theatre 'fly swatting'!!
We scrubbed the room provided for us walls and floor and all the requirements which needed to be used to make it into a theatre and tried to work to good standards of hygiene and sterility. When one looks at the very grubby feet of the patient on the theatre table, one realises that hygiene still has a little further to go in Mobile Eye Work!!
The three weeks of eye camp work entailed long working hours and less than ideal living conditions. Travel is often long, rough, sticky, squashed and rather dusty. Constantly packing and unpacking the theatre for each place we went to is both time consuming and quite tiring. In the three weeks 3,000 patients registered to be seen and 300 had their eyes operated on. In one day, John operated on 37 patients.
One man (escorted by a helper) walked and stumbled for 5 days through the mountains and into the desert to reach Awaran unable to see. John was able to remove his cataracts over a period of two days. With his new 'plus 10' aphakic glasses and with his new found vision he was able to travel back the 5 days to his home.
On another occasion, a little old lady was brought by bus from a long distance. She arrived the day before we were due to leave. She had not seen for 3 years. John operated on both her eyes the following morning and with her 'plus 10' glasses she was able to see again. These are just two stories with happy endings - there are plenty more.
I can only praise God for giving me the opportunity to join in this Mobile Eye Camp work. It brings its own rewards and makes it all worthwhile. All the discomfort of travel and living conditions become totally irrelevant in comparison to the joy and comfort that has been brought to so many needy people.
I left Heathrow, together with John, an eye surgeon, for 3 weeks of Eye Camp work in Baluchistan, Pakistan. We arrived at Karachi in Pakistan and the following day we flew on to Turbat in Baluchistan. We had had very little sleep but collected the mobile eye camp equipment, were joined by the local team and set off crammed like sardines in a tin on a very rough journey into the desert. The desert was very arid, stony and sandy and we were all covered in sand. My hair was caked with it. We took six and a half hours to reach Awaran. It is in a remote area and the people have so little, even of the necessities of life. The animals seem to have next to nothing to graze off.
Outpatients Department (OPD) was crowded with patients all desperately wanting to be seen and helped. The flies also seemed to be desperate to be seen!! We spent a great deal of our time in the theatre 'fly swatting'!!
We scrubbed the room provided for us walls and floor and all the requirements which needed to be used to make it into a theatre and tried to work to good standards of hygiene and sterility. When one looks at the very grubby feet of the patient on the theatre table, one realises that hygiene still has a little further to go in Mobile Eye Work!!
The three weeks of eye camp work entailed long working hours and less than ideal living conditions. Travel is often long, rough, sticky, squashed and rather dusty. Constantly packing and unpacking the theatre for each place we went to is both time consuming and quite tiring. In the three weeks 3,000 patients registered to be seen and 300 had their eyes operated on. In one day, John operated on 37 patients.
One man (escorted by a helper) walked and stumbled for 5 days through the mountains and into the desert to reach Awaran unable to see. John was able to remove his cataracts over a period of two days. With his new 'plus 10' aphakic glasses and with his new found vision he was able to travel back the 5 days to his home.
On another occasion, a little old lady was brought by bus from a long distance. She arrived the day before we were due to leave. She had not seen for 3 years. John operated on both her eyes the following morning and with her 'plus 10' glasses she was able to see again. These are just two stories with happy endings - there are plenty more.
I can only praise God for giving me the opportunity to join in this Mobile Eye Camp work. It brings its own rewards and makes it all worthwhile. All the discomfort of travel and living conditions become totally irrelevant in comparison to the joy and comfort that has been brought to so many needy people.
