Scituate - David Milliken remembers it all like it was yesterday.

Buildings shrouded with barbed wire and people rummaging through dumpsters were just a few of the sights to be seen in El Salvador in 1998, a country then torn with strife and civil war.

“It was a very dangerous time,” said Milliken, a Scituate resident and optometrist. “We went on drives to different clinics throughout Santa Ana (El Salvador) when we were down there, and we’d see young children just wandering the streets, going through the garbage. There are no social services down there.”

Milliken thinks of these things as he prepares to make a return trip to El Salvador in January, continuing the work he did in the country nine years earlier. For 10 days, Milliken and 25 other professionals from various walks of the medical field will set up camp at a clinic in San Miguel. There, they will attend to the various needs of the local residents, which Milliken said are vast.

“It’s troubling, because you get down there and you see that these people have nothing,” Milliken said. “There are impoverished people, children living in shacks. It’s a real eye-opener.”

Milliken’s last trip to El Salvador came as part of a service retreat sponsored by the United Church of Christ in Norwell. This year, Milliken said he’s going in support of Asaprosar, an organization geared toward addressing the medical and eye-care needs facing the residents of El Salvador. Dr. Vicky Guzman, a native Salvadorian, started Asaprosar with the help of health promoters nationwide in the 1970s. According to the organization’s website, Asaprosar has served more than 90,000 people throughout western El Salvador.

Operating room equipment will be shipped to Asaprosar’s Vicky Guzman Clinic in San Miguel, where Milliken, who said he may be the only optometrist among his group of volunteers, will perform surgeries on cataracts and address other eye-care needs such as dry eye and parasitic infections.

Milliken said while eye care is only one facet of the medical needs facing many Salvadorians, it’s an important need to address.

“We just want to allow people to live productive lives again,” he said. “A lot of people we treat are working men, but they can’t see. They can’t build homes for their families or keep steady work.”

Having just recently committed to return to the clinic, Milliken is fast getting ready to make the voyage, and he’s looking for residents to help. As part of the trip, Milliken is collecting unused eyeglasses and sunglasses from residents and medical professionals to be shipped over to the clinic. The prescription from each set of glasses, he said, will be entered into a database and matched up with Salvadorians with the same prescriptions. Milliken said he hopes to donate close to 10,000 pairs of glasses and sunglasses to the clinic.

“People don’t realize that there’s just as much of a need for sunglasses as there are for regular eyeglasses,” he said. ‘There’s a need for everything.”

Following his last trip, Milliken said, he would occasionally receive thank you letters and photographs from Salvadorians wearing their new glasses donated by South Shore residents. In some cases, he said the photos and letters were traced back to and delivered to the person who originally donated the glasses to Asaprosar.

“It’s great because they’re really very appreciative,” Milliken said. “Their smiles make it all worth it.”

Residents interested in donating unused eyeglasses and sunglasses are encouraged to call Milliken Eye Care at 781-544-0000 or visit the Friends of Asaprosar Web site at friendsofasaprosar.org.