Rajasthan is the largest State of the India covering 132,139 sq miles and Jodhpur is its second largest city. Eye camps are operated by a team from the base hospital visiting a rural site on an appointed date – after appropriate local publicity by local volunteers to encourage patients to come for free eye examinations.

OUTREACH EYE CAMPS
All medical equipment has to be packed and transported to the eye camp site. Diseases of the eye are treated and surgery for cataracts are performed in make shift establishments like a school building or a public hall. The team usually stays at the site for 4-5 days during which it performs the free cataract surgeries, applies post-operative dressings. Eye check ups for children and Vitamin A is dispensed at village schools.

Over 2000 operations have been performed annually in these rural eye camps.

INREACH EYE CAMPS
We have found that not all the delicate instruments required stand up to the tough transporting conditions and medical conditions are obviously better at the base hospital. Less risk of infections. We have therefore started our In-Reach programme. This is much on the lines of the Out-Reach programme, in as much as we go to the villages and select the patients needing operations. These we take by bus back to the base hospital where we operate and look after the recovery. Then we take them by bus back to their village.

Apart from these OUT-REACH camps, there is much need for IN-REACH camps. From March 2004 to April 2005 we have performed 15,411 examinations at eye camps and performed a total of 2,237 cataract surgeries. Of these 1,414 surgeries were performed through our IN-REACH programme.