Geta eye hospital
We arrived at Geta hospital just after sunset and in darkness we were let in by the guard through the big twin iron gates leading into the fenced-in hospital area. A number of small fires under the roof along the hospital wall, together with the electric lamps, threw a dim light over patients and relatives preparing their meals or sleeping under blankets on the concrete floor. Sleeping stray dogs slunk away from our headlights as we drove to our quarters, a three-storey building with flats for visitors. The next morning we were able to obtain an overview of the whole hospital area, guided by our travelling companion and head of the board of InFiL, Svein Lie, who is the son of Inger and Finn Lie. He has followed this project from its very beginning. In the centre of the hospital grounds is the registration building where several hundred patients each day queue up for surgical treatment without an appointment. They are all given their case history sheet, later kept in the hospital’s archives. They then walk over to the new central building with its large waiting hall, examination rooms and a corridor leading to the surgical wing which includes an anaesthesia room with 15 benches where one man continuously gives retro bulbar anaesthesia. In the same building there are two operating theatres, one with four, the other with one operating table. There are also several multi-bed wards where the patients spend one night after the operation, and where they are seen by the surgeon the following morning. Here they are looked after by relatives who also give them food, but who must themselves sleep outdoors by their small fires. The patients can have a separate room where one relative also can spend the night, but that costs 200 Rupees, or USD 2. What is striking are all the monkeys among the patients and relatives, together with the stray dogs, thin and casting begging eyes towards any possible chance of food as they scratch their mangy coats. The monkeys are more versatile, moving with great agility between the ground and the big trees, the females with babies hanging on belly or back, the males majestically walking with great sexual pride. The monkeys are also constantly seeking anything edible among the relatives as they cook. Attempts to keep them out by fixing electric wire to the top of the fence have so far been an unsuccessful Norwegian project.
Monkey in the hospital area. (Photo Mons Lie)
We began the morning by meeting with the hospital management. They performed surgery last year on 43,768 patients, including those operated on in the district eye clinics. Geta hospital is the second largest eye hospital in Nepal and the only one with the status of a «Centre of Excellence». They have a staff of 140, of whom 90 work in the hospital, and the remainder in the eye clinics. Altogether 60 % of the patients come from India. In addition to cataracts, they operate for glaucoma, squint and trauma, they perform eyelid correction and last year they carried out 39 corneal transplants. They obtain the corneas from a tissue bank in Kathmandu to which they send corneas harvested in Geta. Geta hospital is planning to establish its own cornea bank. The hospital runs 11 eye clinics caring for the poor in the mountainous areas of the region’s nine districts. These all have permanent staff who can diagnose eye diseases and send the patients who can afford it to Geta. At Geta hospital patients are charged 2400 rupees, or USD 24 for fixed lenses, 6400 rupees, or USD 64 if phacoemulsification with foldable lens implantation is used. Patients who cannot pay are also operated on. Two to three times a year, eye surgeons from Geta go out to the eye clinics with complete surgical teams, operating either in nearby district hospitals or schools. Here the operations are free of charge (6) .