Sherpa Adventure Gear has become the sponsor of the 2015 Restore Vision Expedition team that will provide free eye care from May 1-10, 2015 in the remote Upper Gorkha region of Nepal. The 24-person medical expedition – a project of Dooley Intermed International – expects to serve over 1,500 villagers with eye screening examinations, eyeglasses and sight-restoring surgeries in the impoverished and isolated area.
Sherpa Adventure Gear will outfit the team with functional outdoor clothing that is also practical for the job at hand, with numerous pockets for supplies and instruments used in the free-of-cost eye clinics. The expedition and its successes can be followed on Dooley Intermed International’s Twitter feed and Facebook, as well as at http://www.dooleyintermed.blogspot.com/.
“We are absolutely honored to support this important work in Nepal again,” said Tashi Sherpa, founder and president of Sherpa Adventure Gear. “We look forward to welcoming the team in Kathmandu and giving them a send off that recognizes the value of their mission of sight.”
Scott Hamilton, President of Dooley Intermed, is leading the expedition. Since 1993, Hamilton has traveled to Nepal over a dozen times, organizing research, humanitarian and eye care outreach, including the 2013 Mustang Gift of Sight Expedition, which Sherpa Adventure Gear also sponsored. A short documentary film by Skyship Films, which can be viewed on dooleyintermed.org, chronicled that expedition, which helped about 700 villagers with basic eye exams, vision correction, and sight-restoring cataract surgeries.
Hamilton says there is a huge demand for eye care in Nepal, especially in hard to reach areas. In a March 2014 article in Stamford (Connecticut) magazine about the 2013 Gift of Sight Expedition, Hamilton said, “I never set out to be a humanitarian but when you go to these places and see a need that's enormous, and you know that you can do something about it…a light comes on.” When the 2015 Restore Vision Expedition heads out for the distant Upper Gorkha region, it will use mule caravans to transport all the equipment and supplies required to establish its two temporary eye care clinics.
According to Hamilton, an estimated 80 percent of blindness in Nepal is avoidable or curable. A leading cause of blindness is due to cataracts, which can be surgically repaired. There are also many young and old that suffer from easily corrected vision problems that are not costly: just $100 provides prescription eyeglasses to ten patients and $25 provides a single eye cataract surgery and lens implant, according to the Dooley Intermed International website. Donations can be made at http://www.dooleyintermed.org/.
Sherpa Adventure Gear will outfit the expedition’s eye surgeons and technicians from ISMS-Operation Restore Vision and the Himalaya Eye Hospital, as well as volunteers from the Pema Ts’al Sakya Monastic Institute that serve patients as eye camp assistants, ambassadors and interpreters.
