Providing eye care in Ukraine | OptometryTimes

It was an interesting team of 26 members—including 10 optometrists coming from many areas of the U.S., Canada, and Belgium—that met in Budapest, Hungary, to work together to provide eye care for the underserved. Members ranged in age from 16 to 70+. The VOSH-Ohio team then traveled to Beregovo, Ukraine, for its mission; the last VOSH mission into that area was in 1999. Sharing America’s Resources Abroad (SARA) was our host.

It was an interesting team of 26 members—including 10 optometrists coming from many areas of the U.S., Canada, and Belgium—that met in Budapest, Hungary, to work together to provide eye care for the underserved. Members ranged in age from 16 to 70+. The VOSH-Ohio team then traveled to Beregovo, Ukraine, for its mission; the last VOSH mission into that area was in 1999. Sharing America’s Resources Abroad (SARA) was our host.

 
Our contact for this mission was the Rev. Dr. David Pandy-Szekeres. David is an authorized missionary of the Presbyterian Church of Canada and is directing the Mission to Roma Communities in Transcarpathia. He speaks fluent English, Hungarian, and French and has been awarded a diplomatic passport, which affords him rapid access to border crossing and custom inspections.

 
Getting across the border into the Ukraine takes quite a period of time because we passed through three points of review with our passports. Once inside Ukraine, we worked with the Hungarian Reformed Church. We found that most patients spoke Hungarian even though they live in the Ukraine. Road signs for towns are posted in Hungarian and Ukrainian. The border between the two countries had been moved at one time, and the area we were in was previously ruled by the Austro-Hungarian empire for more than 100 years.

 
Patients were eager for their free eye care, and they crowded around the doors to our clinics, making entrance into the clinics a near impossible task; however, 2,693 patients were cared for in our five days of clinics.

 
The team encountered several interesting cases. We saw many cataracts, dry eye cases, and assorted strabismus conditions. Each exam required an interpreter for queries to/from the patient, which entailed considerable additional time for each exam. Many people had never been seen by a doctor

 

To pay for an eye exam and glasses from a local provider would typically cost about six weeks of wages, so most just went without. Otherwise, they would have had to go hungry.

 

An optometrist from Belgium, Dr. Omar, was a great asset to the team. He successfully removed a foreign body from a patient’s eye using a business card and no anesthesia. He then flooded the eye with antibiotic solution. The patient was happy the eye no longer caused him pain.

 

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