BASTROP DOCTOR HELPS WITH EYE SURGERIES IN JAMAICA
Team traveling to villages performs 76 eye surgeries in exhausting four days.
In a small surgical suite on the outskirts of Ocho Rios, Jamaica, Dr. Pamela Solly handed tools to an eye surgeon, who went to work quickly on a woman with glaucoma so advanced she could hardly see. In the room, the air was hot and stale. Outside, a scuffle of people moved in different directions. A line stretched out the door, with hundreds of men, women and children fighting to receive medical care in a country where it is often scarce and unaffordable.
In Jamaica for four days, Solly — an optometrist in Bastrop — helped eye doctors perform 76 surgeries.
That’s 7 percent of all the eye surgeries performed there in a single year, according to statistics provided by Maxwell Cheng, team leader for the Alliance of Jamaican and American Humanitarians. The work was exhausting, Solly said. “You’re dehydrated. Your body hurts. Your feet hurt. You’re running around like a maniac. And there are hundreds of people outside waiting to come in.”
But it was worth it, she said — to see a woman barely able to see a foot in front of her, put on a pair of glasses and smile. It was the spiritual reward she was looking for as she scoured the web this year for a Christian mission trip — somewhere she could use her skills to give back to others.
“I wanted to do Christian mission work when I was in optometry school,” she said. “I have been thinking about it and wanting to do that for years . ... Now, with my career, I’m in a position where I can leave and other people can take over.”
In June, she left her practice, Bastrop Family Eye Care, in the capable hands of its staff and set off with her two kids, Jenna, 15, and Levi, 19, for Jamaica.
The family stayed in a resort in Ocho Rios. During the day, the two kids would shuttle off with a team of doctors and pharmacists, traveling village-by-village across Jamaica to see patients in run-down churches.
Solly drove to a surgical suite in Port Maria, about 45 minutes away, and scrubbed in with a team of six doctors to assist in glaucoma surgeries for some of the country’s poorest residents, many of them near blindness.
Hundreds of people flooded the cramped space for eye exams. Doctors kept their equipment and supplies on rickety tables, many near collapse. There weren’t exam chairs, so patients sat on regular chairs propped up on cardboard boxes so they could sit high enough for doctors to look into their eyes. One day they ran out of eye drops, another day scrub gowns.
But Solly said they made-do, determined to perform as many surgeries as they could despite the conditions.
In Jamaica, there is one eye doctor for every 180,000 people, and only 20 percent of residents have health insurance, Cheng said. If you aren’t covered, you pay cash up front or you don’t get treated.
“We take health care for granted here,” Solly said. “We just assume if we have a problem — even if we don’t have insurance — you’re going to get treated. And that’s not true there. If something’s wrong with them, if they can’t pay, they can’t get treatment.”
In total, the group, which was organized by Kaiser Permemente and See International, performed 1,500 eye exams in four days. They handed out 1,400 pairs of prescription glasses. One hundred of those were donated by Bastrop Family Eye Care.
“God blessed me with my business,” Solly said. “It gave me the opportunity to use the skills I have for the people who need it.”