Helping The Blind In Chitrakoot

As my 8-year-old son showed me on his globe last night, Chitrakoot, India is almost exactly halfway around the world from New York.  The trip can take 34 hours of non-stop travel. The final 5 hours we spent on a half-paved, half-dirt single-lane road that weaves its way through small villages and towns that time forgot. Our horn never stops blaring as we dodge cows, monkeys and dogs. Speeding, on-coming trucks and buses are so overloaded they’re tipping over.

The road is narrow so every time we swerve to avoid a head-on collision, our tires leave the road. We all hold our breath and close our eyes. India leads the world in roadside deaths with more than 336 deaths a day. Once I asked, “What if the other driver doesn’t swerve in time?”  Our driver said, ”Do not worry sir, in India, all the bad drivers are already dead.”

Our car feels like a time capsule taking us back a thousand years. People are dressed like they were in the bible. They’re using oxen to pull carts. They’re cutting wheat by hand using scythes (invented 500 b.c.)   Did the industrial revolution skip this part of the world?   While we are carrying iphones and ipads, everyone we see is carrying wheat, water or wood on their heads. We come across a family on the side of the road working very hard separating the wheat from the chaff using a manual fan and machetes.

This woman is carrying cow dung which is used for cooking and heating.

Welcome to Madhya Pradesh, India – one of the poorest places on the planet. Per-capita-income is less than a dollar a day and about half the children are too poor to attend school. Instead, they work. We see 5, 10 and 12-year-olds working in the fields, herding cows, collecting firewood. They are all way too skinny. 60% of the children here are malnourished. Infant and child mortality rates are comparable to sub-Saharan Africa. 300,000 children die every year here from “preventable” deaths. The homes we pass range from crumbling brick and clay hovels to huts made out of sticks. The poorest families live in tents. No plumbing and no electricity. Just large piles of dried cow dung for heating and cooking.

40% of the children are too poor too attend school. Instead, they work.

The sun is going down when we arrive at one of the world’s largest eye hospitals and one of our best partner hospitals: they provide more than 125,000 sight-restoring surgeries every year.  3,000 people will sleep on these grounds tonight. Patients sleep inside while their relatives and friends sleep outside. An endless series of wards with floors hold 350-400 patients each. They are all full. Half of these patient go home tomorrow. The other half undergo surgery tomorrow. Hundreds are pouring through the gates tonight hoping to be first in line for registration tomorrow.  It is very cold – 45 degrees. People are huddled around small fires or bundled up under blankets sleeping on the ground. There is no heat in any of the buildings.

We awake at 5:00 to the sound of banging pots and pans. Already a large crowd is forming outside the registration window.

From the wards, columns of blind and partially blind patients pour out single file marching to the O.R.s with each patient resting their left hand on the shoulder of the patient in front of them.

The blind leading the blind. Blind women march off to receive surgery.

You can see in the faces of these patients the pain and suffering that blindness causes. Many of these patients, have traveled hundreds of miles to get here. With silent determination they hang on to each other, some limping, some hunched over severely, some in wheelchairs. They all keep moving. This literally is the blind leading the blind.

Blindness hits women much harder than men. A surgeon said, "To be born female in India is handicap #1..."

A 5-minute surgery restored her eyesight.

In the U.S., being blind is a tragedy. In the developing world; it is close to a death sentence. 60% of children die within two years of becoming blind according to the World Health Organization. For blind adults, vision is but the first of many things they lose. A 45-year-old farmer loses his eyesight and then loses his farm, his house and his family. A 30-year-old mother of four loses her eyesight and then she can no longer take care of her children so her husband throws her out and marries someone else. Children lose their eyesight and then lose the opportunity to go to school, their friends, and all hope of ever getting a job, getting married, raising a family.

There are more blind adults than children BUT blind children suffer in many more ways, for many more years.

Many folks think blindness only affects the elderly. But in developing countries, blindness can strike at any age. We met babies who were born completely blind. Little kids who are going blind. Teenagers who suddenly lost their vision. It’s like an epidemic – and the saddest part is that most of this pain and suffering is completely unnecessary.

FACT: Half of all the blind children and adults in the world could have their vision restored through a $300 surgery that takes 15 minutes or less.

That’s about 20 million children and adults who are blind today – and don’t need to be. That’s about 100 million years of pain and suffering that could be completely avoided. Through a simple surgery that is a true, modern-day medical miracle.

60% of all blindness is caused by lenses that become cloudy. A cloudy lens obstructs light and causes blindness.

This boy had his eyesight restored in 15 minutes.

The cure is simple lens replacement surgery which removes the cloudy lens and replaces it with an artificial lens.  The entire procedure takes about 15 minutes for a child and 5 minutes for an adult.  The incision is so tiny stitches usually aren’t needed. A few hours after surgery when the bandages come off, the patient can see.

We go to the operating room to watch these miracles happen in person. We watch a surgeon effortlessly perform about 12 surgeries in less than an hour. The next patient is always  ready and waiting for him. He never stops and never breaks a sweat. He is  a young, talented  eye surgeon who  has already performed 9,000 surgeries in his career. It is breathtaking.

We go to the ward where hundreds of patients are ready to go home. One after another, the nurses remove their bandages and the eye that was blind opens slowly, squinting in the light. There is a 1-2 second delay before they realize they can now see. They look around – in amazement, smiling, nodding their heads. Many put their hands together and bow their heads and say “thank you.” Then they stand up and go home.

We go to the pediatric ward. The crowds are smaller because there are fewer blind children than blind adults. But children who are blind suffer in many more ways and for many more years than adults. An adult who goes blind when they are 60, faces 5 years of blindness. A baby who is born blind faces 65 years of blindness. A baby born blind will never see a flower, a sunrise or their mother’s face.

Not everyone can be helped. This woman was just told nothing can be done to help her blind daughter.

We meet a 16-year-old boy who suddenly went blind in one eye 7 years ago. He has traveled 300 miles to get here. His family is very poor and could never afford this surgery.  The next day, his eye is completely fixed and his vision restored. There is no swelling or any sign of surgery. Just a big smile on his face and appreciative tears in his mother’s eyes.

For 7 years, this boy has been completely blind in his right eye.

A 15-minute surgery restored his eyesight.

We meet a young couple that is terrified. Their baby daughter was born completely blind in both eyes. They traveled 3 days to get here. The father is a 25-year-old day laborer who makes $20 a month. In 100 years he could not save enough to pay for the surgery their daughter will receive here for free.

A 22-year-old mother whose baby was born completely blind.

The next day we watch as the bandages are taken off their daughter’s eyes. She will need additional surgeries but the surgeon assures the parents their daughter is going to get her eyesight back. Words cannot describe the look of relief on the mother’s face.

The surgeon just told her that her blind baby girl will get her eyesight back in both eyes.

We meet some of the 100+ surgeons and nurses that every day deliver 400 of these miracles through their hearts and hands. They are an impressive bunch. The average surgeon here makes  a few hundred dollars a month. A nurse makes much less.  But we already knew they aren’t here for the money.

Through the hearts and hands of 100+ selfless surgeons and nurses, 400+ miracle surgeries happen every day at Chitrakoot.

A young female surgeon tells us, “To give a blind child the chance to see again, is probably the best thing I will ever do in my life.”  A young nurse explains how “proud I am to make a difference every day for so many poor people.”  One story I heard on this trip was of a little boy who was born completely blind. When his bandages came off, he looks up smiling and says, “So you’re my mommy.”

Before we knew it, our visit is over. The sun is coming up and we are going home. We pass hundreds of new patients who are just arriving as we leave. During the 5-hour drive to the airport, I tried to make sense of everything.

For almost 20 years, as co-founder and president of Smile Train, I traveled to some of the poorest countries in the world to help provide hundreds of thousands of free surgeries for the poor. I have been everywhere from Afghanistan to Haiti, from Somalia to Inner Mongolia. But I have never seen anything quite like what we witnessed in Chitrakoot.

Here’s what I learned.

• None of the major foundations or charities seem to talk about blindness very much but it is a major problem in the developing world that affects 40 million children and adults.
• Unlike AIDS, malaria and other “major” medical problems you see in the news, a cure for 60% of all blindness already exists: a miracle surgery.
• The miracle surgery that can give a blind child or adult their eyesight back costs just $300 and takes just 15 minutes.
• Thousands of local hospitals, eye surgeons and nurses are capable of providing this miracle safe for large numbers of children and adults.
• There are about 20 million blind children and adults who are too poor to afford the surgery they so desperately need.

That’s why these free cure blindness surgery programs for the poor are so important. For 20 million blind children and adults, they are their only chance. Their only hope.

I have been back a few weeks now but I am still shaking my head.

A  $300 surgery that can give a child who is completely blind their eyesight back?

Wow.

What would you pay to get your eyesight back?