Twenty-one...a coming of age
We did it. We made it back to Bihar, in our 21st year of existence and after an absence of 21 months. And it was probably the most important visit to date.
We travelled almost 2,000 kilometres, mostly by road and in various hospital vehicles and over a period of just about a month. We crossed Bihar’s major rivers many times – the Ganga, the Gandak, the Burhi Gandak, the Son and the often troublesome River Kosi. It was the rice harvest. Men, women and children were bent double in the fields from morning till night, slicing away with scythes. At least the weather was kind.
With hungry eyes, deprived for too long of people and places that were once very familiar to us, we saw with fresh sight. A different kind of second sight you might say. Our ears tuned back into Hindi as the main language of communication.
There were surprises along the way. Some shocks. Moments of pure surrealism. I will fill the blog with these tales in weeks to come.
But as we approach Christmas Day 2021 and mark the 21st year of Second Sight’s work, I want to tell you how reaffirming this latest trip to Bihar has been and why I feel that the charity has come of age. I think its’s the best festive news that I can give you.
Back in the year 2000, our first act as a charity was to provide visiting eye surgeons to cure the blind. This timely intervention transformed thousands of lives and altered the rules of engagement for delivering eye services in neglected regions of India.
‘Actually, you changed everything in Bihar’ I was told by ophthalmologist Dr Kumar Krishnan with whom we were reunited on this trip.
In Bihar in 2021, there are more ophthalmologists who have chosen to work in the areas of greatest need than ever before! They are skilled, motivated and provide the full gamut of eye services. They are earning the respect and support of the communities they serve. Actually, they are very much part of these communities. This will guarantee the stability and longevity of the hospitals at which they work.
All this warms the cockles of my ophthalmologist’s heart. It makes me feel as if Second Sight has truly come of age.
So, here is a flavour of the best Feel Good Moments of my trip.
- In the quiet town of Madhepura, north-eastern Bihar, two nights running, two very difficult surgical cases landing on Dr Amit Anand’s operating table, both trauma victims with complicated facial injuries. I watch as Dr Amit meticulously reconstructs each face and most importantly realigns the eyelids so that the patients will not suffer problems in the future. Whilst operating, he explains every step to his paramedic staff. Each case takes two hours.
Earlier in the day, the team were busy with out-patients and 30 blind people had their sight restored with cataract surgery.
No-one complained about the late hour at which we went to bed.
- In another small town Chakia, I marvel at the most realistic prosthetic eye I have ever seen, in a patient my own age called Jhanti Devi. Her clinician, Dr Ajeet Dwivedi (a well-respected Glaucoma specialist whom I first met more than 10years ago), then proceeds to demonstrate to Jhanti’s son how to remove the artificial eye for cleaning and the best way to replace it. Jhanti had lost the eye in a childhood accident and first came to Dr Dwivedi with rip roaring infection in the socket, plus cataract reducing the vision in her only seeing eye. He treated the infection, arranged the fitting of the prosthetic eye in Patna city, then carried out her cataract surgery back in Chakia. For this complete ophthalmic treatment Dr Dwivedi charged only what Jhanti’s barber son could afford. Is it surprising that a young Bihari doctor, who qualified at a prestigious south Indian eye institute, has now made his way here, to work with Dr Dwivedi? Young Dr Shankar beams with job satisfaction. His presence means that small town Chakia now has excellent ophthalmic care for three days a week.
- In a field near Drishti Eye Care Hospital in Aurangabad, meeting Mahendra Ram, wife Shakuntala, daughters Arti and Sheila and their three goats as they harvest the rice. If you get injured please don’t go to quack doctors, come to the eye hospital, we urge them. Do we have to pay? We have no money. For all this work we get only 20% of the takings, explains Mahendra. No, of course you won’t have to pay, interjects Drishti outreach worker Bunty – if you delay after an injury you will lose the eye, your job, everything. Please come to us. And he gesticulates to the hospital sitting like a landed space-ship in the adjourning field.
- An eye screening camp at a school, the pupils still occupying part of the building. The hospital team leave us leaflets about eye diseases and blindness in Bihar, the headteacher tells me, dragging his withered polio leg behind him as we walk across the small campus. This way we extend the education of the children. And help the eye hospital, I add.
- Ragib Hussain, who owns shoe shops, and has paid for his cataract surgery, sitting bolt upright on his hospital bed. Most of the other beds had been occupied by blind patients who had been given free surgery. We are all treated well, the surgery is excellent, he tells me. He is more than happy to pay and the cost is nothing compared to other hospitals in Bihar. Yes, this is a community hospital for all, I add, perhaps a little unnecessarily as he already gets it, dah.
- A small commotion as the female post-operative patients file out of their ward and down the stairs; one diminutive woman answers my question about what colour my shirt is (to test her vision) by bursting into tears. She has had such lovely treatment she tells us all, but now she has to go home and none of her children are there to look after her, they are scattered all over Bihar. Everyone forms a protective circle around her and murmurs sympathy. A few moments later, she is laughing: hospital manager Azhar Khan is warning the male patients not to go home and make life a misery for their daughters-in-law by demanding pampering. A simple cataract operation doesn’t warrant such treatment. Just a year ago, Azhar was in ICU with COVID and we all expected to lose him.
- And finally, two angels – I am not making this up (photographer Jenny Matthews is my witness). They are dashing across the dusty courtyard in front of Aurangabad town’s oldest madrasa, built by the British. It is the wedding season in Bihar, a time when poor families can fall into dreadful debt. But a wonderful organisation of volunteers has arranged a Group Wedding for four brides and their grooms. ‘We provide absolutely everything for each couple’ a young teenaged boy informs me and gesticulates to beds, kitchen utensils, clothes and glittering trunks…and even a solar light! But my mind is on those angels…there they are again, two little skinny girls in white frilly dresses and beautifully made wings, flitting in and out of sight tantalizingly. It is such a joyous occasion, full of goodwill and caring for the poorest in the community … a perfect Christmas tale. So what more fitting that a couple of Bihari angels.
Happy Christmas to you all!
And keep reading this blog…
Lucy