Eye Camps:

 Since 1998, IRIS has funded the annual eye camp program organised by IRIS-Nepal, a local voluntary organisation founded by a group of Nepalese doctors and ophthalmologists which includes Dr. Bal Kumar Khatri KC who worked 7 years as the IRIS Chief Medical Officer in Cambodia. Each year eye camps are arranged in remote, rural areas with the aim of providing cataract surgery to poor people unable to access eye care treatment at local level.

In 2007, IRIS provided a grant of $7,915 towards the cost of eye camps to be staged by IRIS Nepal in 2007 & 2008. By end December 2007, three camps had been staged that resulted in 1,776 people being examined and 148 surgeries being performed. This brings the total number of people examined since the program started in 1998 to 13,596 and the number of blindness prevention surgeries performed to 1,595.

Tilganga Community Health Centre

Located in the midst of a community of 500 families of Dalit caste (the ‘Untouchables’), the IRIS-Nepal Tilganga Community Health Centre is on the outskirts of the Kathmandu and provides low cost high quality general health care to disadvantaged poor families living in the surrounding area.

With a grant of $10,000 provided by IRIS in 2007, the Tilganga Centre offered a weekly program providing primary health care, treating minor diseases, mental health services, family planning, antenatal & postnatal care and an immunisation program for children.

Centre staff also encouraged local women to participate in a rolling programme of livelihood training to learn skills in sewing and tailoring, where participants received 2-hours training a day, 6 days a week over a 6-month period, with the aim of either their gaining employment with a local tailor or opening their own small business.

Remote, rural location, Kalikot Eye Camp, March 2006 Nepal	Immunisation at Tilganga Health Centre