LEYTE, PHILIPPINES NOV 2005

Tacloban City, Leyte, Philippines
Nov 2005
​Team Leader: Dr. Marina Roma-March

Leyte Report from Myra Madrilejos, Certified Optometric Assistant

When I heard that there would be an eyecare project in the Philippines, I immediately wanted to join. Not only would it be a chance to share my skills with others, it would provide me with an opportunity to go back to my own roots. My parents are from the Philippines, yet I had not visited their homeland in 20 years. I looked forward to the prospect of returning.

This was my first time working with Third World Eyecare Society. It?s always a challenge to meet up with 11 strangers knowing that we?ll be living and working together for 2 weeks, but I find that projects like this bring out the best in each person. Our team leader, Dr. Marina Roma-March, was amazing. It was inspiring to see how she connected with our patients. Dr. Giovanni Cinel and Dr. Shaff Gulamhusein were also on the team. The rest of us were opticians and assistants. Although not all of us came from an eyecare background, we all shared a desire to give people the best vision possible.

We set up our clinic in Tacloban City Hospital. Every day, the wonderful nursing staff at the hospital and social workers from the Department of Social Welfare and Development helped us organise the hundreds of people who came to see us. These patients would start waiting at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning just for the chance to have an eye exam! I spent a lot of time in registration. After learning some basic words in the local dialect, and together with a bit of Tagalog and a bit of English, patients and I would catch glimpses into each other?s lives. We met students and farmers, shopkeepers and housewives, drivers and labourers. In many ways, it was like meeting patients at the clinic back home, even though we were more than 10,000 km away.

However, the real delight came from working in the dispensary. It was a technical challenge to match the patients? prescriptions to one of the thousands of pairs of glasses we brought with us. Yet, patients would acknowledge these used eyeglasses with sheer joy (and even tears). A local ophthalmologist helped us by performing cataract surgeries and pterygium removals. In all, we saw over 3500 people and fitted over 2600 pairs of eyeglasses.

TWECS gave me the chance to meet and work with a really great group of people and a chance to reconnect with my own heritage. I want to thank everyone who made this project possible, from the doctors and volunteers I worked with to all the people who dropped off their old eyeglasses at their optometrist?s office. It was the experience of a lifetime!