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 2008, eight camps had been staged that resulted in 6,570 people being examined and 511 surgeries being performed. This brings the total number of people examined since the program started in 1998 to 20,166 and the number of blindness prevention surgeries performed to 2,106.

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 $8,000 provided by IRIS in 2008, the Tilganga Centre offered a weekly program providing primary health care, treating minor diseases, mental health services, family planning, antenatal & postnatal care and an immunization 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.

Michele and the children of Nepal	Opening day at an eye camp in Nepal