Eyewitness to a Great Charity

Our annual walk to raise funds for ORBIS, the “Seeing” charity was completed in November and we have previously reported on the £522.50, including Gift Aid, sponsorship we raised.
This month we received a gracious thank you letter from Fiona Lyons, the Senior Fundraising Officer at ORBIS, together with a copy of their latest Newsletter, the ORBIS EYEWITNESS.

Successes

Among its many stories of the sight-saving actions by Orbis, here are two:

• Sajiya is a little girl from Bihar, India who had been born with congenital cataracts.  During a screening, her condition was identified and she was told to go to the primary health centre, but they told her the blindness was irreversible. However, her grandfather took her to an Orbis supported Hospital.  Sajiya underwent surgery on both eyes.  At 10 years old, she reflects on the life-changing procedure. “The happiest moment for me was to be able to see my family – my mother, brothers, sisters, grandparents – whose faces I had never seen before!”

• Rhoda is a single mother with three children. For the last three years, cataracts blinded the sight in her left eye.  When the Flying Eye Hospital visited Zambia in October, Rhoda was chosen to have her cataracts removed.  For Rhoda, the surgery was also her first time on an aeroplane.

Rhoda now has clear sight. “Before the operation, my sight was not clear. It was cloudy. But now I can read from my phone and see things quite far away. I was never able to read from my phone unless I put it right next to my eye.”

Rhoda wasn’t the only person to receive life changing surgery during the Flying Eye Hospital’s three week visit to Zambia. Orbis teams examined 115 patients, performed more than 50 sight saving surgeries and trained more than 80 eye care professionals.

Royal Support

Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Edinburgh, recently visited Ethiopia with Orbis. During her visit she visited a rural health clinic and hospital where sightsaving screenings and surgeries are done daily.  The Duchess also met patients whose sight had been restored with support from Orbis, and visited a school where children are learning how to protect themselves from blinding trachoma through face washing and good hygiene practices.
Her Royal Highness spoke at a trachoma elimination conference organised by Orbis, in collaboration with Ethiopia’s Ministry for Health. Alongside patients who have experienced trachoma, the Duchess celebrated progress towards elimination and renewed the call to make trachoma history by 2030.