SVOSH-NECO 2012 Clinic in Batey San Ingenio Porvenir
April 7-15, 2012
By: Kristin White
After three years of volunteering, participating in vision screenings throughout Boston, sorting through thousands of glasses, on April 7, 2012, the SVOSH-NECO team departed for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. We were a group of 20 optometry students (19 third years, and 1 second year) and 5 optometrists who partnered for the sixth time with the Dominican organization the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA), a group whose mission is to provide health care, education, disaster relief, and community development programs to some of the most impoverished areas of the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. Specifically, in the Dominican Republic, the BRA works to provide these services to the Bateys which are historically Haitian refugee villages, communities that are in large part lacking in educational and medical services.
The group worked under the direction of Dr. Bina Patel (faculty advisor), Dr. Michael Ruby, Dr. Devina Patel, Dr. Anna-Maria Baglieri and Dr. Brandon Harris for a five day clinic in Batey San Igenio Porvenir, in the southern region of San Pedro de Macoris.
Monday morning we left early to set up our clinic and we were still able to see roughly 150 patients on our first day, as anticipated. Though we had difficulty getting our crates through customs, by Tuesday afternoon, our crates with glasses, medications and toys (collected by a generous boyscout troop from North Andover) had arrived and we dispensed over 300 pairs of glasses and a number of medications for glaucoma and other eye conditions to those we had seen up until that point. The word really must have spread throughout the community that the American doctors were in town because Wednesday morning, the line waiting to be examined when we arrived at 8 am was packed so tightly together and had already been waiting for hours. One of the last patients I examined that day, around 5:30 at night told me she had been waiting since six in the morning to be seen. Countless patients told us their last eye exams had been with the SVOSH-NECO group who worked in the same community about 5 years earlier. Knowing that we were able to provide this service to those who otherwise, in most cases, really would not have access to care, made all the long hours worthwhile.
After five days of an incomparable learning experience where each student had the opportunity to work with a doctor on each patient interaction they experienced, we had examined over 1,100 patients, with hundreds more who were eager to be examined. Students were exposed to so many conditions in such a short period of time, it was like an optometry boot camp: active toxoplasmosis one minute, traumatic glaucoma another, chemical burns, diabetic retinopathy, macular holes, high refractive errors, it was all in a day’s work. Antibiotics, allergy medications, glaucoma medications and steroid eye drops were dispensed as needed, as were reading and distance glasses, sunglasses and artificial tears. For those rare prescriptions, we had the patients select a frame, and VOSH students will make the glasses in Boston to the required specifications and they will be mailed to the BRA’s New York office, where the CEO of the company will then bring them to the community on his next visit to the Dominican Republic.
Our group of 25 came together to provide quality eye care to those most in need. The educational experience is something that we will all carry with us long into our professional careers. The hospitality shown to us and the gratitude from our patients was not to be rivaled, and something we should each try to replicate. We showed ourselves that eye care can be done in sometimes unconventional ways, while still providing the necessary services. Overall, we were able to provide many with the ability to view their world a bit more clearly, and through this experience, we now see the world through a different lens as well.
After three years of volunteering, participating in vision screenings throughout Boston, sorting through thousands of glasses, on April 7, 2012, the SVOSH-NECO team departed for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. We were a group of 20 optometry students (19 third years, and 1 second year) and 5 optometrists who partnered for the sixth time with the Dominican organization the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA), a group whose mission is to provide health care, education, disaster relief, and community development programs to some of the most impoverished areas of the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. Specifically, in the Dominican Republic, the BRA works to provide these services to the Bateys which are historically Haitian refugee villages, communities that are in large part lacking in educational and medical services.
The group worked under the direction of Dr. Bina Patel (faculty advisor), Dr. Michael Ruby, Dr. Devina Patel, Dr. Anna-Maria Baglieri and Dr. Brandon Harris for a five day clinic in Batey San Igenio Porvenir, in the southern region of San Pedro de Macoris.
Monday morning we left early to set up our clinic and we were still able to see roughly 150 patients on our first day, as anticipated. Though we had difficulty getting our crates through customs, by Tuesday afternoon, our crates with glasses, medications and toys (collected by a generous boyscout troop from North Andover) had arrived and we dispensed over 300 pairs of glasses and a number of medications for glaucoma and other eye conditions to those we had seen up until that point. The word really must have spread throughout the community that the American doctors were in town because Wednesday morning, the line waiting to be examined when we arrived at 8 am was packed so tightly together and had already been waiting for hours. One of the last patients I examined that day, around 5:30 at night told me she had been waiting since six in the morning to be seen. Countless patients told us their last eye exams had been with the SVOSH-NECO group who worked in the same community about 5 years earlier. Knowing that we were able to provide this service to those who otherwise, in most cases, really would not have access to care, made all the long hours worthwhile.
After five days of an incomparable learning experience where each student had the opportunity to work with a doctor on each patient interaction they experienced, we had examined over 1,100 patients, with hundreds more who were eager to be examined. Students were exposed to so many conditions in such a short period of time, it was like an optometry boot camp: active toxoplasmosis one minute, traumatic glaucoma another, chemical burns, diabetic retinopathy, macular holes, high refractive errors, it was all in a day’s work. Antibiotics, allergy medications, glaucoma medications and steroid eye drops were dispensed as needed, as were reading and distance glasses, sunglasses and artificial tears. For those rare prescriptions, we had the patients select a frame, and VOSH students will make the glasses in Boston to the required specifications and they will be mailed to the BRA’s New York office, where the CEO of the company will then bring them to the community on his next visit to the Dominican Republic.
Our group of 25 came together to provide quality eye care to those most in need. The educational experience is something that we will all carry with us long into our professional careers. The hospitality shown to us and the gratitude from our patients was not to be rivaled, and something we should each try to replicate. We showed ourselves that eye care can be done in sometimes unconventional ways, while still providing the necessary services. Overall, we were able to provide many with the ability to view their world a bit more clearly, and through this experience, we now see the world through a different lens as well.