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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.
Purpose of the Organization
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.
Dr. Pike's Philosophy
“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.”
Growth of Enfoque Ixcán
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.
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