Flight and Sight
Sherpas seeing new horizons by Dick Jackson, Aspen Expeditions
A past evening at the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, Colorado celebrated a flight to benefit sight in a region far removed from the comfortable confines of Aspen.
Dick Jackson, co-owner and pilot of Aspen Paragliding, is hosted "Between Earth & Sky," an adventure documentary that showcases an expedition he led to teach Sherpas the sport of paragliding in the rarefied air of Khumbu, Nepal. "Most people there hadn't seen a paraglider before, let alone get to fly one," Jackson said. "To be able to share that experience was so rewarding."
Giving back to a region that Westerners usually take from - one Sherpa in "Between Earth & Sky" opines that Mount Everest was once considered sacred until all the "white monkeys" came to climb it - is an underlying premise of the film, which has also been released on DVD.
But Jackson is the first to admit that sharing the sport of paragliding pales in comparison to what the $12.50 price of admission to the film's Aspen premier at the Wheeler will buy: the gift of eyesight. Proceeds from the "Between Earth & Sky" screening are going to the Himalayan Cataract Project, which formed over a decade ago to respond to a mounting eye-care crisis in the region. Due to intense high-altitude sunlight, genetic predilection, poor nutrition, and other factors, the Himalayas have one of the highest rates of blindness in the world.
Cataract blindness - which causes more than 70 percent of blindness in Nepal - affects half of Tibet's population by the time persons there reach age 70, and many go blind before the age of 40, according to Dr. Geoff Tabin, an associate professor of surgery and ophthalmology at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. Tabin, who co-founded the Himalayan Cataract Project with Nepalese ophthalmologist Dr. Sanduk Ruit, was a special guest at the Wheeler screening, where a segment called "Miracle Doctors" from the National Geographic television show "Ultimate Explorer" was also be shown. That film details Tabin's and Ruit's lifework. "What we're doing is taking state-of-the-art Western cataract surgery and delivering it with 99 percent of the quality of the very best cataract surgeries you get in the Western world at one one-hundredth of the cost," Tabin said in a recent telephone interview.
The objective of the Himalayan Cataract Project is to establish a sustainable eye-care infrastructure in the region that empowers local doctors through on-hands and educational training. Thanks to the project, tens of thousands of people in Nepal, Tibet, China, Bhutan, India, Sikkim and Pakistan have their sight restored each year.
Tabin, who is the fourth person to climb the highest point of all seven of the world's continents, and Ruit hike several thousand vertical feet spanning long distances to access remote regions where people live with no electricity and cook meals over open fires of dried yak dung. There, they set up eye camps. Some who come to the camps only require eye drops or glasses, but most are suffering from cataract-caused blindness. The loss of sight is difficult anywhere, but it can be deadly for residents of a high-altitude setting where one false step could be their last. It also makes providing for one's family challenging, if not impossible. "The most (cataract surgeries) I've ever done in one day is somewhere in the fifties," Tabin said. "The most Dr. Ruit has operated in a day is 101. That's in a 12-hour day."
Receiving no compensation for their work, Tabin and Ruit perform two-thirds of their operations for free. Cataract surgery is usually expensive, but Tabin and Ruit began manufacturing their own plastic lenses required in the surgery in Katmandu, bringing the cost of their operations to a meager $10 per eye. "In 1994, there were only 15,000 cataract surgeries in Nepal and only 1,000 of those were performed by modern techniques using lens implants. Last year, there were 118,000 cataract surgeries and nearly all of those were done using modern techniques with lens implants," Tabin said. "Nepal is now the only country in the region where there are more cataract surgeries than new cases of cataract blindness," he added.
In "Miracle Doctors," wide smiles are shown spreading across patients' faces as their eye bandages are removed following the surgeries. Some patients saw family members for the first time. Others were able to observe their environmental and social surroundings after decades of living in darkness. Since 1995, the Himalayan Cataract Project has trained about 40 surgeons in the region to counter cataracts plus entire teams of eye technicians and nurses. "Most of what we're dong now is teaching," Tabin said.
For Aspen's Jackson, Tabin's and Ruit's work are what trips to the Himalayas are all about. "One of the things I love about the Khumbu is its symmetry, all earth and sky with the Sherpa people living in the balance," Jackson says in "Between Earth & Sky," which Frank Pickell, a former Aspen resident, helped produce. "The mountains drew me (there) in the first place, but the people are what kept me coming back."
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Dick Jackson is an IFMGA certified mountain guide and owner of Aspen Expeditions and Aspen Paragliding. Aspen Expeditions is an AIARE avalanche course provider with a full schedule of courses, tours, climbs and international expeditions. Find them at www.aspenexpeditions.com or toll free on 1-877-790-2777.