Mobile eye clinic from Miami providing care to tsunami victims

[AsahinaKimi]

ONAGAWA —

A state-of-the-art mobile eye clinic, transported by air from Miami, has begun offering much-needed services in northeastern Japan for people with eye diseases and ailments who had no access to care after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Vision Van, a large bus equipped with a comprehensive examination room, three screening stations, a waiting room and advanced ophthalmic equipment, will tour the tsunami-devastated coastal communities for three months, as its owner, the University of Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, has agreed to lend it for free.

‘‘I think these people here that I met today are really some of the most dignified people,’’ said Richard Lee, associate professor at the institute, as the van began seeing people in Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture.

Lee arrived in Japan on April 14 to train Japanese doctors on how to use the self-contained eye clinic, aboard a special cargo plane that transported the 12-meter van to at Sendai airport in the prefecture.

The airport, submerged by the March tsunami, just resumed operations Wednesday but only for domestic flights. In light of the urgent need for the provision of eye care to tsunami victims, the plane was given special permission to land at the airport. ‘‘I was told that I was the first international passenger (since the resumption),’’ Lee said.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/mobile-eye-clinic-from-miami-providing-care-to-tsunami-victims