There are people who stop at nothing. And then there is Luz Carmona. There is no setback that has the ability to stop this 51-year-old from Barcelona. Not even a fire. In September 2016, he did not hesitate to drive his Seat Panda for five consecutive days until he reached the island of Lesbos (Greece) to deliver the glasses that the Barraquer Foundation had donated to the thousands of refugees in the Moria camp. There, in a container donated by the UN, she would end up creating a clinic where she would take care, with the help of volunteer optometrists and ophthalmologists from all over the world, for the eye health of the most needy people. And she did so until September 8, 2020, when the camp went up in flames, a fire that was not accidental, she assures her. She was left with nothing. Anyone in her situation would have thrown in the towel. She does not.
He continued to provide his help to those who asked for it: collaborating with organizations that offered physiotherapy in other camps, teaching blind children to use the cane… At the same time, he tried unsuccessfully to start the clinic again. There was a moment when even she, a tireless fighter, thought of giving up: she couldn’t find any cooperation. Until the miracle happened. When she thought that all was lost, the Swiss foundation Suyana crossed her path. Now Luz has a mobile clinic aboard a motorhome and offers optometry services to all the Greek refugee camps that request it.
His is a story of giving to others without expecting anything in return. After disinterestedly distributing glasses around the world –in Tibet, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru and some African countries-, he decided to head towards Lesbos. The reason? She was traumatized when she saw what was happening there. “I felt that my soul was asking me,” she told La Vanguardia in a report published in 2021.
It would be in the Moría camp where he would found his NGO -Light Without Borders- and create an eye health clinic in a container donated by the UN. It was in service for three years, until the fateful fire of September 2020. Its container was not hit by the flames, but it was left with nothing. He explains that there was an organization that took advantage of the context to keep all the stock of glasses it had (5,000 units). Also with the autorefractometer, the instrument used to measure graduation. “But I have no proof of it,” he admits.
It was a hard blow. The hard work of three years reduced to nothing. But she pulled herself together. As? To begin with, helping as he could in other tasks (transferring patients who needed physiotherapy in other camps with his Panda; teaching blind children to use the cane…) and all this while trying to start the clinic again. Fortune, however, did not quite smile on him: all the projects that emerged on the horizon did not come to fruition.
It was at that moment of crisis when this newspaper, without knowing the situation it was going through, crossed its path. The idea was to do a report on him and explain to the readers his admirable work in Greece. The publication of that article, according to his words, would end up changing everything.
A member of the Swiss Suyana Foundation read it and contacted her. It was October 2021. They agreed to meet in Athens for an interview. There she shared with the organization the idea that was on her mind: a mobile clinic to reach more people. And she presented a project.
Before they could pronounce themselves, she proposed that they accompany her on an expedition. She was running in March 2022. For the occasion, she rented a truck and adapted it as a mobile clinic. “When they saw it they said: ‘This can work.'” In June they called her to tell her that they were giving her the funds and support for three years of the project.
The first thing they did was pay him money to buy the motorhome. He looked for models all over the place: Madrid, Barcelona, ??Granada… “I wanted something concrete, with a suitable length to create a first room to do the vision tests (three meters are needed between the patient and the letters he sees) and a second one for the boutique, where we have and deliver the glasses”.
In the end, he found one in the Netherlands that suited his needs. “It was second hand, but it only had 50,000 kilometers.” And that’s where he left. The rear of the vehicle was cracked from an accident. “I reformed it and conditioned it all, turning it into a mobile clinic seven and a half meters long.”
He premiered it at the end of November 2022 on an expedition to the Ritsona camp and the Thiva camp, a small camp whose refugees, for the most part, are people (Kurds and Syrians) without papers. “They are very vulnerable people located in the middle of nowhere, just like in Ritsona. The situation in these camps is very tough. Many are without papers and do not even have the right to food. It is the neighbors who give it to them”.
She says that there are mothers, especially Africans, “who prostitute themselves for three or four euros to feed their babies, because they don’t have any kind of financial help.” “This is happening in refugee camps in Europe,” she stresses.
The Suyana Foundation is also giving funds to perform cataract operations for patients who need it and are detected at the clinic. Since they have had this resource, they have already performed five interventions: on a Somali man (Mohamed, 65 years old) who only needed to have an eye operated on; Ahmad, a 20-year-old Iranian citizen who was born with congenital cataracts and had both eyes operated on at different times; and Tchilalou, a 55-year-old Cameroonian woman who has also been operated on by both of them. They have also detected several children with strabismus who possibly require an intervention and “that it is feasible that it can also be paid for by the foundation”.
At the moment, they are overwhelmed with so much demand, and it is that the word has begun to spread among the camps that the mobile clinic exists “and it is being a total success.” “There are voluntary refugees in each camp who do a prior screening and so, when we arrive, we already have contact with the patients and we know which ones we have to summon. We are full.” Luz defines as “brutal” the positive impact that a job like the one they carry out has on the people they serve.
Recently, in addition, it has been able to partially solve the lack of stock of glasses. When he was in the Moria camp, the Fundación Etnia de Barcelona provided them for him. At the end of the year, however, this entity informed him that they could no longer collaborate with his NGO. Fortunately, he has been able to solve this contingency thanks to the OneSight EssilorLuxottica foundation. “They will provide us with reading glasses and a very interesting lens system, which can be adjusted on the spot on the frame, without having to wait.”
50% of the glasses that they usually deliver can be covered by this entity. For the remaining 50% – which includes more expensive glasses to treat, for example, astigmatism – they are contacting other lens companies so that they can help them. “We have many open fronts and obstacles appear along the way. But there we are, at least to continue creating hope ”, he concludes.
