Recently, PazSalud hosted 14 healthcare persons who participated in a medical brigade in rural El Salvador. Three of the members who did eye exams brought with them over 3,000 pairs of donated eyeglasses. Even though hundreds of people came daily for care, there were eyeglasses left over. The glasses now “travel” to all parts of El Salvador. I’ll tell you how.
There is a well-known inner-city parish in the city of San Salvador that has many social and health programs for the people living in “La Chakra”, a marginal and extremely poor barrio. One of the services is an eye clinic. It was a logical place for us to donate our overflow glasses.
Just a week after taking the glasses to La Chakra, we were with a medical brigade in one of the many poor villages that line the southern coast of El Salvador. A village school hosted the brigade. At the end of the day, I was asked if there was any chance we could arrange for an eye exam for a young 15 year old. (He wore very thick glasses, but he had long passed the time when they gave him much help.)
La Chakra was the logical answer. However, in El Salvador, what seems like a simple event often develops into something more complicated. As I would have expected, MANY children in the coastal school are in need of glasses.
So, last week we had a wonderful excursion to the eye clinic in La Chakra. Six students, the school principal, and a teacher were examined and all need glasses. The 15 year old, Gerson, had his prescription changed, and a happy 11 year old second grader received glasses. The others will return in a week, along with three new patients. So it goes. How blessed we are to have resources to be able to make such connections!
The photo shows the happy group. There is a very happy 11 year old in the front row. It doesn’t matter to him that his eyeglass lenses are as thick as the bottom of a pop bottle. He can now “read letters” and see the blackboard for the first time in his life.
© El Salvador Health Mission