Special Feature
the boy and his mother in their
bus to a larger medical centre in
another part of the country where
the youngster was able to undergo
surgery the following day.
Dr. Pearce said that case highlight-
ed the importance of his mission
trip work.
“The contrast in first-world and
third-world care had never been so
apparent,” he said.
Two decades of
mission trips
By Denis Langlois
Dr. Jason Pearce remembers
it vividly. been waiting a long while for the
group to arrive.
Upon arriving in a small village
during an eye care mission trip
in the impoverished country of
Malawi, Africa, the Calgary-based
optometrist and his group of ECPs
noticed a young boy, likely around
10 years old, curled up in the dirt
outside of the community’s clinic. “Through our translators, they let
us know that he had endured a tree
branch injury to his eye a few days
earlier,” Pearce recalled.
He was wearing tattered clothes,
no shoes and had dirt-stained tears
running down his cheeks. He had
42 Optical Prism | October 2019
“With plenty of topical anesthetic,
fluorescein and a portable slit lamp,
we were able to see that he had
a penetrating injury to the globe
which would require surgery.”
The team acted quickly, taking
That young boy was just a of the
countless patients Dr. Pearce has
encountered during his multiple
volunteer vision care projects over
the past two decades to developing
countries around the globe.
An optometrist at Signal Hill Eye
Care, Dr. Pearce has provided eye
care in Central American countries
like Honduras and Costa Rica,
African nations like Zimbabwe and
Mozambique as well as countries in
Asia and the Carribean.
This year, he has taken part in
mission trips in Cambodia and the
Philippines.
Pearce and three other optome-
trists from his graduating class are
planning to travel to rural commu-
nities in Jamaica next month, with
the support of the charity Canadian
Vision Centre, to mark 20 years
since becoming optometrists.
Dr. Pearce said he joined a volunteer
eyecare mission team shortly after
graduating from optometry school