Organization History

Guatemala’s Ixcán region, with over 100,000 residents, is located in the northwestern part of the country near the Mexican border. In 1996, while visiting the area, Portland, OR, optometrist Dr. Scott Pike met a poor Mayan subsistence farmer, named Pedro Chom. Pedro lived in a co-operatively formed village, Santa Maria Tzeja.

This chance meeting would change both their lives.

Every member of the co-operative is expected to volunteer for the good of the village and Pedro contributed a few hours of his time each week to work as a “health promoter”. To compensate for the lack of doctors in these remote areas, the government trains local residents on the basics of health care. From minor injuries to delivering a baby, they become the “health needs go-to people”. Although he took pride in and enjoyed his work as a health promoter Pedro was going to quit his job because he was having difficulty reading the instructions on the medicines he dispensed to his patients.

Dr. Pike realized that all Pedro needed was reading glasses. Like most other people in the Ixcán, he had no access to eye care and was too poor to afford it. The nearest eye doctor was six to ten hours away in the city of Coban. Few could afford the ride (in the back of a truck), the time away from their farms and families, or the doctors fees. When Dr. Pike returned to Portland he made up a pair of glasses and sent them back to Pedro.

Dr. Pike returned to the village the next year and with Pedro’s assistance launched an eye care project for this village. Enfoque Ixcán was born. The name Enfoque Ixcán means “Focusing on the Ixcán”. Through the years Pedro took on more and more of the village’s healthcare responsibilities and now, 14 years later, his volunteer work has evolved into a fulltime, paid, position, called the village health facilitator.

Over 40% of the people of the Ixcán area need glasses. Almost 5% are blind with cataracts. While most cataracts are found on older people, children and young adults are also being diagnosed with them.

Since 1996 Dr. Pike has methodically developed the project to bring primary eye care to this extraordinarily underserved population. Every year he spends a week in Santa Maria Tzeja teaching Pedro, Felipe Panjoj, who started working with EI in 2005, and now, Arnulfo Mejía, our newest eye health promoter who started in 2009, the basics of eye care including anatomy, optics, refraction, eye glasses dispensing, and disease recognition. Each time he visits, Dr. Pike takes the three men additional equipment and over time their skills and abilities have developed. To date they have examined over 550 people from more than 25 different villages. Glasses are dispensed from an inventory which Dr. Pike re-stocks on his twice yearly visits.

With the addition of Arnulfo to our eye care team, we are now able to serve a larger area of the Ixcán. He works out of his pharmacy in the village of Mayalan on the western side of the region. The availability of affordable eye care brings people to Santa Maria Tzejá and Mayalan from all parts of the Ixcán.

Good eye care also includes education and prevention. Our eye health promoters have sun glasses and baseball hats available for protection from the ultra-violet rays of the sun and lubricating eye drops to protect from drying from living around wood fires and the dust and wind of working out of doors.

“I knew, and expected, when I started this adventure that it was a long term project. The Ixcán has over 100,000 residents. Most, like Pedro, cannot afford eye care. Because of the poverty of this region, it is very unlikely that an eye care professional will settle there in the near future. But, the last 12 years have shown us that the model we started here works.

The underlying philosophy of Enfoque Ixcán is that the most appropriate help we have to offer is to train local people to help themselves. Our goal is to provide the training and resources which empower local health promoters and Guatemalan doctors to treat and care for their neighbors. It is our belief that improved vision and eye care substantially increase one’s dignity and quality of life.”

As the project expanded beyond Dr. Pike’s ability to personally cover expenses, Enfoque Ixcán was formed as a charitable organization in 2005. It received its 501©3 status in May 2006.

Visualiza

In 2002, Dr. Pike forged a relationship with an eye clinic named Visualiza in Guatemala City. This venture has enabled EI to send people for procedures such as cataract and other eye surgeries for a minimal outlay of US dollars. Since 2003, the organization has funded 48 surgeries, thus improving the quality of life for many families. Visualiza’s special fees for the poor, called “social service” fees, enable EI to pay for a patient’s cataract surgery (ies) plus travel, food and lodging for six days for approximately $280. All of the patients EI sends to Visualiza qualify as social service patients.

Amigos Eyecare of Pacific University

In 2003, Dr. Pike began working with an education supervisor in the Ixcán named Apolonio Gonzales who has over 60 schools – 4,000 students – under his supervision. None of those young people had regular vision care. This concerned Gonzales who knew how important vision is to learning and he wanted to create a vision care program for his students.

To address this problem, Dr. Pike launched an annual trip to the Ixcán with optometry students from Pacific University College of Optometry in Forest Grove, OR where he is an assistant professor. Each group spends a week visiting village schools in the far reaches of the Ixcán, checking eyes and dispensing glasses to children and adults alike. In their eight visits they have seen 4,700 patients, dispensed over 2400 pairs of glasses, and identified well over 100 people needing cataract surgeries. Those recommended to have surgery are referred to Felipe and Arnulfo who arranges trips to Visualiza. The eye health promoters follow-up with each patient one week and then one month after surgery to make sure they are healing properly. We are presently diagnosing 3 times more patients for cataract surgeries than we are able afford. As more donations are made to Enfoque Ixcán, we hope to close that gap.

Guatemalan Ministry of Health

In 2006, Pedro and Felipe, along with Dr. Pike, visited the local public health office. After explaining EI’s work, the two men were recognized as official eye health promoters for the Ixcán by the Guatemalan Ministry of Health. The Ministry’s public health doctor has offered to assist EI with health training opportunities as well as patient transportation to Visualiza. In time, EI hopes to work more closely with this government health office, realizing that inter-institutional collaboration will strengthen the project.

An example of this trust and collaboration came in February 2010. The Public Health doctor in the Ixcán was aware of a medical mission from the United States coming to a village in the Ixcán, intending to include eye care in their mission. They, however, were unable to find an optometrist to accompany them. We were able to arrange for Pedro and Felipe to join the visiting medical team and in the 4 days of clinics they examined the eyes of 120 people, dispensed glasses and identified several more for surgeries. Enfoque Ixcán is the only locally available eye care for the Ixcán.

Cooperative Ventures with Local Optometrists

Dr. Pike and EI’s Board believe that when the organization has created a solid infrastructure of locally provided eye health care, Guatemalan optometrists will be willing to make periodic visits to the region and offer a new level of professional care supported by EI’s team of eye health promoters. An optometrist from Guatemala City, Rolando Cabrera, has been going to the Ixcán with Dr. Pike and the Amigos Eye Care volunteers since 2008. He also provides consultation and training for the eye health promoters, and has been a great help to Enfoque Ixcan.

Help and Support of a Guatemalan Rotary club

For 8 years Enfoque Ixcán has had the help of Guatemala Oeste Rotary Club. The club has provided in-country hospitality and covered a majority of in-country travel expenses for the Amigos Eye Care trips. They have been instrumental in the success of our project and without their generosity many of our students would be unable to be involved in our mission trips.