Connie Frisbee Houde
– GLOBAL PHOTOGRAPHER –
NOOR Eye Project
The following is excerpted from an article written by Travis Durfee, who I invited to accompany me on this journey. Links to Photos NOOR are below this article
One of the many programs run by NOOR (which means “light” in Persian) brings eye care to Afghans in these remote areas through eye camps. Small buses or Range Rovers loaded up with medical equipment trek out to areas of need for two to three weeks at a time to provide a range of basic eye-care services like testing vision, providing eye drops and ointments, and filling eye glass prescriptions. NOOR-trained doctors also perform basic surgical procedures, like cataract removal and lens replacement…
NOOR, a program of the Kabul based International Assistance Mission, has operated almost continually in Afghanistan since 1966. And although it receives no government funding, NOOR provides the majority of eye-care services in Afghanistan…
Tom Little, or Mr. Tom as he is called by the Afghans who work under him, oversees NOOR’s three 40- to 45- bed eye hospitals, one in each of the country’s three major cities of Kabul, Heart, and Mazar-i-Sharif, as well as a number of smaller 8- to 10-bed facilities in the smaller cities of Khost, Nilli and Talaqon. The program also provides support and pays the doctors and technicians at the Ministry of Health’s main hospital in Kabul, an 80-bed facility. NOOR operates roughly a dozen eye camps throughout the country each year, as well as a number of day clinics just outside of the cities containing the major hospitals. All told, NOOR facilities saw 234,570 outpatients in 2003, and operated on more than 14,000.
All of these hospitals are staffed and run by Afghans trained and paid by NOOR, which employs more than 200 Afghans nationwide…NOOR also runs a fully functional, and quite busy, eyeglasses-manufacturing shop in Kabul…NOOR produces and sells approximately 25,000 pairs of low-cost eyeglasses per year… Little likes the program to run autonomously…”That way if we’re ever kicked out of the country again the hospitals don’t have to shut down and people can still get glasses.”
For the complete article, visit www.metroland.net/back_issues/vol_27_no18/features.html
Donations to NOOR
Tax-deductible contributions to the NOOR Eye Project can be made to InterServe. and sent to Connie Frisbee Houde, 22 Elm Street Albany, New York 12202. Please write NOOR Eye Project in the memo-line. Checks will be forwarded to the United States office.
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- The NOOR Kamaz is a bus built on the frame of a Russian truck and is used by the provincial surgical eye teams to transport the team and their medical equipment.
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- The April 3, 2004 Kunduz eye camp team from left to right: Karim (driver, vision exams), Massood (refraction), Said Yasin (outpatient exams and translator), Massood Gholam (student / registration), Shafiq (nurse), Jumma Khan (cook); back row Travis Durfee (reporter), Dr. Yusuf Baraki. Noor Mohammad (nurse) was not present.
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- Eye camps are announced by written notice posted throughout the area where the team will be.
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- Men scrambling to receive their registration form allowing them to be seen by the team.
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- The coveted registration card.
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- Massoud, 20, an ophthalmic technician, giving an eye exam. The patient is to tell him which direction the prongs of the letter “E” are pointing. Arabic letters cannot be used conveniently because of their shapes.
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- Eye testing for women was held indoors so they could lift back their burqa in privacy.
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- Men lined up for their eye test outdoors.
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- Man reading eye chart.
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- A blind patient, led to the eye camp by his daughter, is being examined in preparation for surgical treatment.
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- Average strengths of glass prescriptions are brought from Kabul to be sold to patients during an eye camp.
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- Guma Family Story – Qandygul Guma and her mother are waiting to be seen during the eye camp in Kunduz. They traveled four hours by bus from the neighboring village of Imamsib.
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- Mahammed Guma, 45-year-old rice farmer brought his eighth and youngest daughter Qandygul, to Kunduz for help.
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- Qandygul has been blind since she was 7 months old as a result of congenital cataracts. At 7 years of age the family is finally able to seek assistance for the first time for their daughter.
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- Qandygul has been sightless since she was an infant and Dr. Baraki is uncertain whether or not the neural pathways that should have developed during her early childhood will know how to process the light that will soon pass through her optic nerves. The doctor says there is a possibility that the operation will only lead to a different blindness-an all-white, incomprehensible blur, as opposed to the current black cloud. It will be a matter of months after the operation before Dr. Baraki knows if Qandygul has retained any semblance of normal vision.
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- With his forefingers pressed against Qandygul’s wrist, the anesthesiologist pulls double duty as a heart-rate monitor since none exist.
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- Qandygul’s mother and father wait for the bandages to be removed.
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- Two of the over 3,000 patients seen by the eye team over a three week period.
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- Kabul NOOR Eye Program – Tom Little, program director for NOOR known by the Afghans as Mr. Tom.
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- Glasses made in the “factory,” a small building filled with machines and molds, located in Kabul. These were prescriptions that had been taken that morning and were made in the afternoon to be picked up by the patient at the clinic the next morning.
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- A refraction taking place at the Ministry of Health’s main hospital in Kabul.
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- Woman leaving the women’s ward at the Kabul University Hospital.
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- Women’s ward at the Kabul University Hospital.
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- Young boy recovering from eye surgery, sitting outside the men’s ward at the Kabul University Hospital.
Connie Frisbee Houde 
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Thank you for this record. Tom was killed serving in-country Aug 2010, helping others.
Thank you. We all who knew him are so heartbroken.
This is a huge loss: for all of us. I am so sorry , especially for those that knew him personally and more – professionally. He was a gift. Connie, please express our sorrow to the family and return to us safely.