Two local optometrists are reflecting on the success of a recent journey to bring the gift of sight to communities in need.
Dr. Kim Bugera, along with her husband Dr. Peter Laansoo and six other Canadian optometrists, travelled to Madagascar three months ago on a Vision Care trip. While there, Bugera said they saw 1,901 patients, donated 1,493 pairs of glasses, and treated 783 eye diseases, with some referred for further treatment.
The 2023 Canadian Vision Care trip was from Nov. 5-17, and travelled to some of the island country's rural areas where vision care is most inaccessible. The team was made up of eight optometrists from Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, with half fluent in French (an official language of Madagascar). They landed in Antananarivo and made their way to the last clinic in Antsirabe.
"It's always rewarding to go to a country in need and be able to help people who wouldn't otherwise get that help," Bugera said.
"We had to have last-minute malaria vaccinations; there were so many reasons not to do it (go on the trip), but do it anyway," Laansoo said. "Because with risk comes the reward."
He said a local Malagasy optometrist, who also took two weeks off work to go around with the crew and tend to patients, inspired the Canadian contingent.
"Our local sponsor — seeing the impact it had on her — she was feeling alone, and having a big team come in lifted her up,'' he said.
Alongside her was another optometrist, a guide, and six Malagasy interpreters. Volunteers ran each day's events, with about six at each location they visited.
Even though the trip was held during the country's chaotic elections and violent political protests, Bugera and Laansoo said they were not worried because the townspeople protected them.
"Our families were more scared of it than we were," Kim said.
Even the wave of sickness that hit the crew when they arrived could not keep them away from the patients. Dedication and determination won against the challenges of an unfamiliar environment and even the bad roads they had to travel on to get from one location to the next.
"No one dropped out," Peter said.
Bugera said Malagasy people live by the concept of "fihavanana," which roughly translates to kinship and fellowship, and it helped make the team feel connected to the community.
"Sometimes we [would] see about 300 people a day, and sometimes a lot of people would show up, but we couldn't accommodate everyone," Bugera said. "They were so kind. Sometimes they would line up in the rain waiting to be helped, all while smiling."
"There was a little girl, her family thought she had developmental delays," she said. "It took a whole team and 12 prescriptions, then she got glasses and was very happy to see."
This was their first Vision Care trip after the COVID-19 pandemic, so they were excited and pleasantly surprised by the cool spring climate at Antananarivo and other places around Madagascar they travelled to.
Although the trip was through and sponsored by Canadian Vision-care and the St. Albert Rotary Club, Bugera said they took time off from their practices and paid their own way through the trip, only using the foundation's funds for glass prescriptions they did not already have in their donations.
"The majority of the glasses were donated, and we only ordered the ones we did not have prescriptions for. They had glasses in the market, but they were just frames with regular glass," Dr Laansoo added.
The two optometrists urge everyone who has a spare pair of used glasses not to throw them away, but donate them.
Bugera said getting glasses at age 13 and seeing colourful berries sharply for the first time was a call to help others experience the gift of sight.
Laansoo, who shares the same passion for advocacy for vision, was coincidentally drawn to optometry when he had a contact lens-related problem he wanted to research and diagnose in high school. He and Bugera met at undergrad optometry school, and have now been on a few Vision Care trips together.
"We have been lucky to grow up in Canada and have good jobs," Bugera said. "In other countries, such as Madagascar, there are only a handful of optometrists when there is a huge [demand]."
