San Francisco 2 Rotary - Projects

Rotavision International was founded by T. Otis Paul, M.D., in September 1993, when he traveled to Zimbabwe to teach the eye surgeons of that country how to treat children’s eye diseases.

Dr.Paul has enlisted the services of other U.S. ophthalmologists--Dr. August Reader and Dr. Robert Sergent--to work within the Rotavision model to teach and empower doctors in developing countries to treat children and adults with disabling eye problems. Working with members of the Rotary Club of San Francisco, they have raised funds for the purchase of surgical instruments, anesthesia machines, glasses, and eye drops that have been donated to more than 20 third-world countries.

Teaching Techniques

This photo of Dr. Paul working in an operating room in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, won Honorable Mention in the 2006 Rotary International photo contest. It was taken by Dr. August Reader.

Rotavision physicians and volunteers have now completed more than 50 missions, trained several hundred ophthalmologists in countries visited, and examined and treated more than 1,800 children and adults. At the end of a week of examinations and surgeries, Rotavision physicians and volunteers donate a set of instruments to enable the local ophthalmologists to continue performing these surgeries after the team leaves the country. In this way, the educational legacy of Rotavision will continue to grow for generations to come.

One excellent example of the Rotavision model is Xuan Hong, M.D. She was a student of Dr. Paul when he first visited Ho Chi Minh City (formally Saigon) in 1997. At that time, she had never operated on children for “cross-eyes” or other similar problems collectively known as “strabismus.” Dr. Paul examined several dozen patients with Dr. Hong and performed more than 20 surgeries with her. After that visit, she performed over 500 surgeries on her own before Dr. Paul returned in 2000. At that time, he demonstrated more advanced techniques that gave her the skills and techniques to do more than 1,000 surgeries over the ensuing three years before his next trip to Vietnam in 2003.

Further training at that time empowered Dr. Hong to teach while performing over 1,500 surgeries during the next three years.

Dr. August Reader, Dr. Hong, and Dr. T. Otis Paul in Ho Chi Minh City.

Thanks to the work of Dr. Hong's team, when Dr. Paul and his team returned in January, 2006, they were able to focus on more complicated forms of strabimus and treat several children for double vision due to nerve injury from head trauma. The uniqueness of this situation is the basis of a paper that is being written for publication in a U.S. medical journal.

A child just before corrective surgery is apprehensive, but after surgery, he is happily held by his mother.

Volunteers Play a Role

Rotarians from the Rotary Club of San Francisco and other Bay Area clubs participate in these trips by assisting physicians in the examinations, distributing stuffed animals to the children after the clinic and surgery, enlisting participation of the local Rotarians, and giving moral support to the surgical team during their very busy week in country. Rotarian volunteers have shown the patients, parents, and local physicians and Rotarians the Rotavision meaning of “Service Above Self.”

For more information, please contact one of the Rotavision cochairs:

T. Otis Paul, M.D., at otispaul@hotmail.com

August L. Reader, M.D., at areaderiii@aol.com.

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