January 6, 2016

Greetings to all our loyal fans, if you’ve followed us this far you would know that this week we have started our final projects working for the Aravind eye hospital. Aaron gave you a great introduction to our project in an earlier post and today I will take you through the day I had with my specific small team working on one of the four assigned projects.

I could not start writing about our work at Aravind Eye Care without first noting the importance of our early morning yoga session with our group’s personal 70 year old yoga master. The sunrise yoga on the program on the hotel rooftop has been quite popular within our group, including the professors, and seems to get everyone’s day off to a good start. Though at 2pm when I am complaining about my burning thigh muscles I start to wonder if the 6:30am palm tree pose is actually worth it.

Getting to the hospital in the morning we get right to work. My specific work team focuses on patient education in the pediatric eye clinic of the hospital. We work directly with multiple ophthalmologists in creating a way to educate young patients and their families about the basics of modern eye care. Our group specifically has worked out with the doctors that they’re needs to be more signage throughout the pediatric eye clinic waiting areas to cut down on FAQs and incorrect beliefs about eye health by Indian families. For example, there is an Indian myth that doing handstands will help solve a child’s vision problems. Things like this are making it harder for doctors to convince the parents that the children actually need to wear corrective lenses permanently to help their child grow and succeed.

Our chosen way of educating is to develop a set of easy to read/understand posters and FAQs for the parents to educate them before their visit with the doctor. Today we made a prototype poster and brought it back to the doctors for feedback. We are eternally grateful that they take the time out of their busy schedule and give us 30 minutes of their best effort to better educate their patients. I have never seen this sort of dedication or motivation from doctors back home. We worked until about 5pm where we then went over to a shopping area to glance through the numerous storefronts. Some of the shopping group even found some authentic yoga mats. After dusk the Indian streets start to flood with folks walking about after work is over, this is when you can get a clear picture of the population of India.

Overall our experience so far in India has been completely amazing and I can say I will never forget the things I have done and seen here. The chance to help Aravind Eye Clinic carry on their mission of providing affordable care to end needless blindness is humbling and I cannot thank them enough for giving us this opportunity.

Thank you for reading,

Tyler