Medical clinics with teams from all over the country led by Lynn Renne of Aldersgate UMC, have been held in the library once or twice a year, beginning in 2010. During these clinics, patients with a need for eyeglasses were seen and tested. Prescription glasses and reading glasses were given at no charge.
The most difficult thing for us was to test people who had waited hours to be seen, only to be told that there was no way to help them with glasses. That they had cataracts. The looks of despair in their faces were difficult to handle. In 2014, Lynn contacted Dr. Michel Gelinas of Wisconsin, who had experience doing cataract surgery in 3rd world countries, and asked if he would be interested in helping bring cataract surgery to our corner of Kenya. He was, and began the planning process, working with an ophthalmologist in a Kenya government hospital about 30 minutes from the Amani Centre.
Dr. Gelinas has traveled to Kenya 3 times to perform cataract surgery. Through donations to the cataract surgery program from fundraisers in Evansville, equipment has been purchased and taken to a small O.R. in the Kenyan hospital. This has led to the building of a new operating room designated just for eye surgery, and 2 new eye surgeons have been appointed there.
One of them, Dr, Frank Okada, a recent graduate of the University of Nairobi, has written to express his appreciation. “….the impact of all this is huge that I can’t exhaust in this letter. Most of all is we now offer new technology services to our patients, restoring back vision; hence they go back to the community to engage in nation building rather than becoming dependents… Dr. Gelinas has taken time to train the eye department staff on use of the new equipment, and is teaching us on (use of) the new donated instruments including their routine maintenance.”
