liv L.B. BRILLIANT At the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta we thank Drs. Bill Foege, Don Hopkins, Stan Foster, Steve Jones, Steven Thacker, and Ke-Won Choi. At WHO-Geneva, Dr. Bjorn Thylefors, Programme Manager, the WHO Blindness Prevention and Control Programme, kindly provided advice and encouragement during the completion of the survey. A number of other institutions have participated in this project by providing funds, technical help, implementation, support, or ad- vice. The major implementing agency was the Nepal Blindness Prevention and Control Project, which is a joint undertaking of the Ministry of Health, His Majesty's Government of Nepal, and the Blindness Prevention and Control Programme of the World Health Organization. The major funding for the project, including the majority of the funds for this survey, came from the Ministry of Foreign Assistance, Government of the Netherlands, whose generous assistance to the programme included financial support of the fieldwork and data analysis of the survey. At the request of Robert Friedland, the Evergreen Helicopter Company, McMinnville, Oregon, donated free use of an Alouette III Helicopter, which made it possible to visit remote and otherwise inaccessible sites in Nepal. We calculated that without the helicopter it would have taken ·over ten ophthalmologist years to complete the 105 sites selected throughout the country. Transporting the helicopter to Nepal was a major undertaking, arranged with the help of the Seva Foundation and several individuals and organizations, including Ren Breck, Jahanara Romney, Robert Friedland, Suzanne Gilbert, Bob Weir, Judy Gallagher, Durga Moffitt, and the staff of the U.S. Embassy, Kathmandu. We thank Steven Jobs, formerly of the Apple Computer Com- pany, and Mike D'Addio of Corvus Systems, Inc. for donating one of the first microcomputer systems-an Apple II-for use in Nepal. The Seva Foundation carried out the pretest survey and gave technical assistance as well as volunteers to help in the fieldwork of the survey. In addition, Seva was primarily responsible for conducting the data analysis and for producing this report, subcontracting portions to The University of Michigan's Department of Epidemiology and the Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, at The University of Michigan, all of whom we gratefully acknowledge. Dr. Girija Brilliant acted as the overall editor of this report, coordinating the work of dozens of individual researchers and authors. I want especially to thank Dr. Grasset and Dr. Pokhrel for giving me the opportunity to work as Survey Manager of this challenging and rewarding project. Their dedication and commitment to
