Focus magazine Ireland Spring 2014
Focus Spring 2014
Your magazine from Sightsavers
Eye care in remote places
How we get help to the people who need it most
Cover photo, full page and wrapping from front to back: aerial view of swampy terrain around a traditional homestead in Nasir County, South Sudan, comprising three thatched huts, with people, cattle, geese, and washing on a line, tiny and just visible. © Adriane Ohanesian/Sightsavers
Welcome
I am delighted to welcome you to the first edition of your new magazine, Focus, our first mailing of the year. Inside, we share some inspirational stories from our programmes and we hope you’ll enjoy seeing the wonderful impact of your donations.
In September, you helped make an eye camp in South Sudan a reality, despite the lack of roads, power and clean water in this war-torn and youngest of countries.
The nearest hospital for the people of Nasir County, Upper Nile State, is three to four days’ journey away by boat so eye problems usually go untreated. By the end of 14 days of dawn-to-dusk work, our team had performed 95 cataract and 191 advanced trachoma surgeries.
Thank you.
[signature]
Michael Marren
Chief Executive, Sightsavers Ireland
Large photo of two middle-aged women shown side by side from bust up, wearing variously coloured tops and headwear, one holding a walking pole, looking towards each other and smiling: Sisters Julius and Nyakaka Yaul Nyuon travelled two days for Nyakaka (right) to have cataract surgery – and to see her twin clearly for the first time in years. © Adriane Ohanesian/Sightsavers
In this issue …
Map showing most of Africa, Asia and Indian Ocean, highlighting from left to right Guinea, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Bangladesh
4 Vision
Women and sight loss in West Africa
Small photo of head of Guinean woman in red head scarf
© Laura Crow / Sightsavers
“Access to medical attention for ALL” Michael Marren
6 Focus on …
Cataract facts, figures and surgery
Small photo of surgeon and assistant gowned up and bent over washing hands in basic conditions
© Adriane Ohanesian/Sightsavers
“We have only one operating microscope, shared between areas” Surgeon Kun Chuol
8 Picture this
Stepping out after treatment
10 New view
Hazrat has hope for the future
12 Inspire
From Galway the The Gambia, and more
14 Horizons
Marking World Sight Day and celebrating our junior painters
Small photo of part of cover of Sightsavers Charity Calendar 2014
Contact us
Post: 70 Upper George’s Street, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin
Telephone: 1850 60 20 20
Email:
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Facebook: SightsaversIreland
Website: http://www.sightsavers.ie
Sightsavers is committed to transparency and good governance to ensure we deliver maximum value and impact with your generous donations. We comply with The Irish Development NGOs Code of Corporate Governance, the Statement of Guiding Principles of Fundraising and the Dóchas Code of Conduct on Images and Messages.
Vision: Family in the dark
Four photos:
1 Patients rest on their beds after cataract surgery at Kenema hospital, Sierra Leone.
© Suzanne Porter/Sightsavers
2 ‘Baby Joe’ had no idea that treatment for her cataract was available and effective. © Sightsavers
3 After surgery, the Joe family now have a brighter future. © Sightsavers
4 Houssienatou hopes she’ll be able to cook and visit the mosque again after surgery in Guinea.
© Laura Crow/Sightsavers
[Highlighted panel]
Women and our work
“Two thirds of people who are blind are women and 90 per cent of those women live in developing countries.
“Women are often last in line to receive medical attention and first to drop out of education. This limits human and social development and so the cycle of poverty is perpetuated.
“Sightsavers is supporting its partners in the development of programmes that work with local cultures to ensure that access to medical attention and education for ALL remains paramount.”
From a longer feature on thejournal.ie by our Chief Executive Michael Marren.
Vision: Family in the dark (continued)
When 42-year-old Baby Joe arrived at the clinic with her adult daughter, teenage son and three-month-old granddaughter, all of them were found to be blind. What was their story?
Baby Joe remembers going blind. It was more than 15 years ago when her daughter was just a little girl, and what should have been a joyful time in their lives turned into a nightmare. Just as she was trying to cope with her sight loss, her husband abandoned both mother and child. Perhaps he considered their blindness too great a burden to bear.
Later she married and became pregnant again, only to be abandoned a second time when her baby was born blind. Despite suffering daily from the stigma attached to her disability, Baby Joe never imagined that help was available. Almost all of her late family had had eye problems so she believed that nothing could be done to restore her sight.
Years went by without hope until, in October 2013, a neighbour from the same village in Sierra Leone came back from a successful visit to an eye clinic. They strongly encouraged the Joe family to travel to Kenema to get their eyes tested.
A transforming journey
The foursome seized the opportunity and braved the journey to the eye clinic. A team of ophthalmic health workers gave them all a thorough examination. They diagnosed Baby Joe and both her children with cataract and the tiny granddaughter with vascularised corneal scars.
This was bad news for the real baby of the family. Her condition was untreatable and she will never see. But for each of the three with cataract, a straightforward operation transformed both their vision and their lives. In a single day, they regained their independence and were able to travel home, towards a brighter future.
Baby Joe plans to begin small-scale trading from her home – and her 16-year-old son is looking forward to playing football for the first time in his life!
[Irish Aid logo]
We’re very grateful to Irish Aid for its four-year commitment to support our work in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, Mali, Senegal and Guinea.
Find out more about what cataract is, and how we treat it, on the next page
Focus on … : cataract
Welcome to the first of a series on eye conditions you’re helping to tackle
What?
The name derives from the Latin ‘cataracta’, meaning ‘waterfall’ (the rapids turn clear water white) or ‘portcullis’ (shutting out the world).
Why?
The lens of the eye is made almost entirely of protein molecules. If they tangle, the tissue gradually loses its transparency. Causes of tangling are old age, physical injury, UVB light, diabetes, genetic conditions, excessive exposure to UVB light, some medications and smoking.
When and where?
Cataract surgery was written about as long ago as 800 BC in an Indian Sanskrit manuscript and 1000 AD by Iraqi–Egyptian scientist Ammar ibn Ali al-Mawsili.
In 1950, Harold Ridley implanted the first artificial lens and, in 1967, Charles Kelman introduced phacoemulsification (explained on next page).
18m people suffer from cataract
Who?
Cataract is the leading cause of avoidable blindness worldwide with 18 million people affected. In the countries where we work, many people with cataract go without treatment due to lack of knowledge, a lack of equipment and trained staff in hospitals, and the difficulty in travelling to and paying for treatment.
How?
Your donations help by:
· training community workers to identify patients.
· training specialist doctors and nurses.
· providing free transport and free surgery to patients.
· providing eye camps in remote areas that lack healthcare services.
Three photos, all © Zul Mukhida/Sightsavers:
1 John Makhonde’s cataract was well developed and clearly visible in this close up of his face
2 The number of eye health workers across Africa is critically low but you’re helping to train more. Here’s John being operated on in Blantyre, Malawi
3 After his operation, John is thrilled to see his wife again – and he can return to work
Focus on … : cataract (continued)
The detail
The lens is suspended just behind the iris in a pocket or capsule supported by a ring of fantastically fine fibres.
With cataract, light can still pass through the cornea (the clear layer at the front of the eye) and the pupil (the aperture in the iris) but it can’t reach the retina, the ‘film’ in the ‘camera’. So no signal reaches the optic nerve, and the brain has nothing to process.
The traditional treatment of ‘couching’ crudely knocks the entire cataract and capsule out of the way to sink to the bottom of the eyeball. This can lead to infection and permanent damage.
Modern surgery is carried out with the aid of a microscope and involves pulling the cataract out of the eye through a small incision. Most of the capsule remains and is used to hold a plastic replacement lens. There is no need for stitches so recovery is fast.
In the best-equipped hospitals, high-frequency sound energy is used to break up the cataract so it can be sucked out through an even tinier incision. This is called phacoemulsification.
Diagram showing parts of the eye. © kocakayaali/Shutterstock
[Bound-in insert]
Equipping the experts
“I enjoy my job very much, especially bringing someone back to normal life after they have been living in darkness: it’s a very wonderful thing.
“It upsets me that I see patients who need help and I am not able to help them because of something that is not available.
“We need very important pieces of equipment. We have only one operating microscope, shared between areas. A slit lamp would make diagnosis easier and more accurate. If there is medication available, it’s difficult for people to pay for, as many blind people have no job and they are very poor. This is the challenge of working in South Sudan.”
Cataract surgeon
Kun Chuol
Photo of Kun Chuol standing facing reader, in full operating gown, hat and mask, rubber-gloved hands clasped in front of him. © Adriane Ohanesian / Sightsavers
I want to help end avoidable blindness
1 I’m sending a donation of:
€32 could fund a sight-restoring operation for an adult like John so they can work
€56 could give a child with cataract the chance to play with their friends
€450 could equip a surgeon like Kun with the instruments they need to restore sight
Other amount €
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Your donation will be used to support our work wherever the need is greatest. Sightsavers is fully committed to The Statement of Guiding Principles for Fundraising.
Patron: Michael D Higgins, PRESIDENT OF IRELAND.
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Picture this: Stepping out
Photo fills two pages: a tall, thin woman stands with her back to us. She is silhouetted against the bright light in a doorway and wears a calf-length robe, is barefoot and holds a biceps-high walking pole.
© Adriane Ohanesian/Sightsavers
Venturing into the daylight unaided, this woman is one of nearly 300 patients to regain their independence and dignity thanks to sight-saving surgery at our eye camp in South Sudan. For two weeks, the medical team worked long hours in basic conditions to bring new life to remote communities in Upper Nile State.
Picture this: Stepping out (continued)
Remainder of photo
New view: Life begins at …
If your sight can’t be restored, even by surgery, how do you find hope for the future? Hazrat’s story shows the way
Hazrat Billal loves his grocery shop. “I’m ideal to run it,” he says. “Everybody knows me!” He’s open whenever his customers might need him, from early in the morning to late at night, and does a roaring trade in soap and cooking oil. Hazrat keeps a tidy establishment – that way he can find anything he’s asked for. But handling money can be tricky. Hazrat can’t see, so the various values of otherwise nearly identical notes are hard to tell apart.
Blind since birth, the 39-year-old is used to coping with the daily challenges of sight loss. He’s been luckier than many people in his situation, having relatives who are willing and able to support him through life. Yet when he got married and he and his wife Shomola had two children, Hazrat didn’t feel quite the father he wanted to be. He didn’t have the confidence or practical skills to go out and earn a living for the family himself. So, what changed?
As simple as ABC
In 2008, a worker from Sightsavers’ Bangladeshi partner Action for Blind Children (ABC) came across Hazrat. Despite its name, ABC works with people of any age who have disabilities, and their worker knew the potential for Hazrat’s life, if he could only access the right services.
Thanks to ABC’s referral, Hazrat was officially registered as permanently disabled and introduced to other people with visual impairment – and there’s been no holding him back since.
Hazrat and 20 other members formed the self-help group Arjunchar Dristi Protibondi Bohumoki Kallayan Samabay Samity. They meet monthly and their aims are to support each other to live independently, become financially independent as a group, and campaign for the rights of people with disabilities in Narshingdi town.
It was this, to him, revolutionary thinking that enabled Hazrat to embark on a new life – and he’s delighted at the path he’s taken: “Now I can set an example of work for my children to see.”
Photo of three seated women wearing saris and holding white sticks: Hazrat’s friend Rashida (centre) went blind from glaucoma so, when her husband left, she was frightened for her and her children’s security. Thanks to the self-help group, she now has an income from keeping chickens. © Peter Caton/Sightsavers