With an eye to help

The Lions Club of Byculla’s dream project, Mobile Ophthalmic Screening Van, equipped with diagnostic eye care equipment was donated to B. Y. L. Nair Charitable Hospital on June 22, 2004 in the presence of Johny Joseph, municipal commissioner of Bombay. "We thought it was payback time,” noted chairman-projects, Percy Buharivala and Club president Eruch Mistry explaining their rationale for pursuing this project for the past two years. The Club had been utilizing the services of the ophthalmic department of Nair Hospital, especially their mobile van for a number of years for its eye care and detection/opera­tive surgery camps until it was decommissioned a couple of years ago.

The new van will cater to the eye care needs of the poorest of the poor not only in the slums but also in municipal schools, old people’s homes, family welfare centers, homes for street children, schools for the disabled. Fitted with equipment worth Rs 10 lakhs (with financial support extended by the Lions Clubs International Foundation, USA), the "main purpose of the van will be to make early diagnosis, give prompt treatment for eye diseases so as to prevent reversible blindness and thus improve the quality of vision, free of charge” among the needy, states the release.