Chennai, India June 14 - June 21, 2008

Location: 1hour south of Chennai, India at Little Flock Children’s Home
Partner: Twin Lakes Church (Santa Cruz) Medical and Dental Team
Clinic days: June 17-20
Patient count: 140 (mostly elderly women + 15-20 Little Flock kids)
Cataract referrals (list given to Little Flock’s Director): 50
Optometry clinic: Elizabeth Lee, O.D. and Tina Chiang (acuities and dispensing)

Appropriately dressed in casual saris, we opened the optometry clinic from Tuesday to Friday (four 8 hour workdays), seeing a total of ~150 patients. We were able to help many with prescription glasses that we brought from the U.S. However, many of our older patients had dense cataracts, for whom we made a list for referral to the Chennai Eye School. We also gave out a bottle of artificial tears and/or a bottle of Patanol (kindly donated by Alcon and VOSH-CA) to most patients. Little Flock and the TLC medical team provided us a translator, flowed the patients through the optometry clinic, and dispensed medications. We learned how to ask “like this, or like this?” while taking rotating E visual acuities. And we learned how to communicate by boggling our head side-to-side to indicate, “yes, ok, uh-huh, yeah, good, hi, and bye!” In addition to the clinic, a few people from TLC team help put together a children’s English program for Little Flock’s 41 children in the afternoon. Thanks VOSH-CA and Alcon for your help in making this trip possible!