A decade in darkness
Can you imagine not being able to see for so long that the sight of a mobile phone is new to you?
That’s exactly what happened to Mekang Pauline from Cameroon. After being blind for ten years, she had resigned herself to never getting back her sight. She visited a traditional healer, whose medicine helped with the pain, but did not save her vision.
Pauline found that she could no longer live independently or help her family, and that her condition created more tasks for those caring for her. She missed being able to see her children, and found it extremely difficult not to be able to help them.
Identification and diagnosis
In 2008, Mutebe Vincent Etiki, the senior ophthalmic nurse at one of Sightsavers’ satellite clinics in Bangem, identified Pauline through a screening exercise, and arranged for the Sightsavers hospital truck to pick her up and bring her to the eye unit at Kumba Hospital. She had cataract in both eyes, as well as changes in the vitreous of her right eye, and was totally blind.
Getting her vision back
The day after her surgery the bandages are removed, and Pauline, after 10 years, can now see again! As soon as her daughter helps her to her feet, she grabs her stick and bursts into song, waving her arms in the air and singing in her local Bokassi dialect. Her daughter and the ophthalmic nurse join in, and the hospital ward is filled with happiness.
When Dr Ebongo showed Pauline a mobile phone, something that had been introduced to Cameroon after Pauline stopped being able to see, she studied it with interest, despite having no idea what it is.
Pauline is so happy that she can now look after her family and children again, and says that first she thanks God, and also Vincent Etiki who identified her cataract, and finally the whole team who helped her regain her sight. She declares: “I hope the eye team can go out and do for others what they did for me.”
More images
What do you think?