NEWS ARCHIVE

Gusti’s rehabilitation

Seven years ago 18-year-old Gusti had a motorbike accident and became a paraplegic. He comes from a very poor family and, while they looked after him very well, they couldn’t afford suitable medical or rehabilitation treatment for him.

He came to our Foundation’s attention via another organisation, Kupu Kupu, which helps disabled people in Bali. For seven years, Gusti had been lying in bed, his life wasting away. The family had consulted a traditional healer who decided that immersing his legs in boiling water would help. This caused a complete breakdown of his flesh, and when we first went to see him, his legs were rotting away, being eaten by maggots which saved him from gangrene, but did nothing for his mobility.

The Foundation offered to arrange a free amputation operation, which Gusti and his family accepted. While Gusti was in hospital, his room was cleaned and painted, and we gave him one of our donated hydraulic hospital beds, complete with bars above so he could exercise the upper part of his body. We also engaged a physiotherapist once he had left hospital to teach him exercises to loosen up his lower back so that he could eventually sit in a wheelchair.

By a stroke of Balinese luck, John Fawcett happened to meet at the Bali airport one day a wonderful man from Perth who works with paraplegic wheelchairs, who offered to send one to Bali specially fitted for Gusti. This duly arrived, and Gusti is working hard on his exercises so that he can use the chair to become more mobile.

Cataract operations and field screenings

In Bali over this two-month period a total of 9,167 village people and primary school children had their eyes checked, 332 underwent a free cataract operation, while 2,426 received a pair of glasses to improve their vision. In South Kalimantan 81 villagers underwent a free cataract operation in the mobile eye clinic, and in Lombok 55 cataract operations were performed.

August-September 2006: Field Eye Screening in North Bali and ongoing funding for NBMEC

Field eye screenings were held in the villages of Gerogak, Busungbiu and Gilimanuk in North Bali by the YKI screening team in conjunction with the North Bali Mobile Eye Clinic.

On one of the field screenings in North Bali, a wonderful couple from Australia came to visit, and were so impressed that they decided to fund the North Bali Eye Clinic over the next 3 years. This is a tremendous boost to our work and will ensure the continuation of this highly successful sight restoration program.

28 September – 14 October 2006: Documentary on the work of the Foundation

Richard Todd, documentary maker from Margaret River, Western Australia, made his fourth visit to Bali to shoot footage for a documentary on the Foundation’s humanitarian activities, which he is doing on a voluntary basis. Richard has also made short promotional documentaries using excerpts from the same footage, which have been invaluable for fundraising purposes. He is also helping develop some short items on prevention of damage to eyes for local television.

9 September 2006: Children’s Eye Operations

Three children underwent free sight restoring cataract operations with ophthalmic surgeon Dr Dharyata in the Rumah Sakit Puri Raharja in September, and in the same operating session two children with sightless eyes underwent eviscerations to enable a prosthesis eye to be fitted at a later stage.

1 September 2006: XL Group visits North Bali Mobile Eye Clinic

Participants from the XL Group Seminar visited the North Bali Mobile Eye Clinic in the village of Busungbiu, a very poor area west of Singaraja. They found the experience very moving and came away even more committed to helping the Foundation with its humanitarian work. The XL Group held an auction on their final evening in Bali and raised significant funding for the Sight Restoration and Blindness Prevention Project.

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