Eye Camp is one of the easiest projects, a Club can do, without much trouble. The club should approach one of the Lions Base Hospitals, like our hospital who conduct Eye Camps periodically.
1. What the Sponsor club should do for conducting an Eye Camp?
2. What are the responsibilities of the sponsoring club and the Base Hospital respectively? The answer follows:
The “Do’s” and “Don’ts” for organizing and Eye Camp.
Do’s
1. The Sponsoring club should contact our Base Eye Hospital and finalize the Camp Date atleast 2 weeks in advance, so that the Base Hospital can Organise the dates of the Camp for all the Clubs without any clash in the Camp Dates.
2. Print and circulate pamphlets.
3. Propaganda for the camp can be done as door to door propaganda, delivering hand-bills in the locality (house to house), or through Auto announcing or as newspaper-inserts, banners etc.
4. Arrange a good venue – like a Government or Private School or a Community or Marriage Hall or a Panchayat Office – no amount should be spent on venue. Look out for free location only. Venue should have at least 3 to 4 rooms. Toilet facility is a must for urine test for the selected patients.
5. Lunch should be arranged for the camping team and also food packets for the Patients selected for free Surgery. Food need not be given for all the Out-Patients. It is not only expensive, but also, it diverts the focus of the Camp. People interested in taking food may flood the Camp O.P. instead of genuine Eye Patients.
6. If the sponsoring Club can afford, they can take up the transportation of the Patients from Camp Site and to the Base Hospital and Back. Or otherwise, it will be done by the Base Hospital itself. This is done on mutual agreement.
7. Once the Patients are transported to the Base Hospital, the major work of the Base Hospital starts :
8. The club member should visit the Hospital once during the surgery, to see the amount of tedious work done by the staff in maintaining harmony amongst the free patients during their hospital stay, besides doing the best kind of surgery for them.
9. Feeding and sheltering the patients for next five sessions, doing all the Pre-operative examinations like B.P., Sugar, Eye-tension, Kerato meter reading, “A” Scan, etc.
10. Then, the Intra ocular Lens implantation Surgery is done by the latest methodology and the next day Post-operative examinations, Black Glasses, Medicines for one week, followed by the do’s and don’ts instructions for the operated Patients are given.
11. For the Camp you can inform District Officials including the Sight First Chairman.
12. On the day of the Camp, at least one locally popular person well known to the people of that area, should be present in the Camp site throughout the duration of the Camp, so that the Selected Patients for the Surgery get themselves convinced to go for Surgery with the Camp team.
13. In some areas, counselling of the Patients for Surgery by the local popular Person is more effective than the counselling person of the Camp Team.
Don’ts
1. During the Eye screening Camp, please try to avoid Annadhanam (Free food for all), because the focus of the Camp will not be in-screening genuine Eye patients, but on seeing people who may turn up for free food. Thus as the time is over by 1.00 pm, the actual eye problem patients may not be examined at all.
2. Free Spectacles need not be promised in the pamphlet. In genuine cases, distribution of glasses to the Patients may be restricted to the selection of the optometrist. The Club can select 5 to 10 such persons genuinely requiring glasses and look for a sponsor for the same (it is not a must).
3. The food and shelter given by the hospital for the free patients will be the best to the possible extent. The liking and disliking may differ from patient to patient. The club members should understand the difficulty of the hospital and thus try to be a good mediator between the patients and the hospital. They should avoid being a fault-finder of the hospital just to pacify the patients who complain to them without any reasonable fault.(This does not apply to all)
4. The focus and concern of the campus should be mainly the surgery and it’s vision out-come for the patients.