Over the past year, Munema Fakir has noticed something special about her 1 -year -old daughter Sumaya. Her left eye was overcast. He did not make his curiosity or flash in the sun. When the problem persisted, Mrs. Fakira made the wheels for health clinics in her city in the central Mozambique. Doctors said they couldn’t help.
However, they knew about someone who could, if Mrs. Fakira could take Sumaya, now 2, 100 miles to travel to the coast.
The family went on a trip to the city of Quelimane, where Dr. Isaac Vasco da Gama examined Sumaya’s eyes and quickly diagnosed the innate cataract.
Mrs. Fakira was skeptical – cataracts are for the old people, she said. Dr. Da Gama, however, explained that infection at birth or shortly afterwards can cause cataracts in children. This condition is particularly worrying because vision problems affect the development of the child’s physical function. The good news, however, said that the problem could be solved by a simple surgery that does a dozen times a week in Quelimane Central Hospital.
This was especially lucky for Sumaya, because Dr. Da Gama is one of three pediatric ophthalmologists in Mosambique, a country of 30 million people.
Sumaya underwent surgery in November and a day later headed home and had already recovered. Dr. Da Gama was pleased to see her when she was still young before there was permanent damage.
It was a sign that the system that he and his colleagues have been trying to introduce in the last few years could catch: Sumay’s parents were looking for help from the medical system for eye problems – rather than a traditional healer or magician remove the curse.
When Sumaya was ceded to care, it was a long and expensive trip, but she got help relatively quickly with a problem that could otherwise suppress her life. Ideally, her cataract would be seen by a midwife at birth.
“I believe that by moving forward, we can slowly overcome this challenge,” Dr. Da gama.
In Mosambique, as in most Sub -Saharan Africa, awareness of vision problems is so low and access to help so limited that few children receive the care they need, even if many suffer from easily healing problems.
In 2021, the Global Eye Health Commission reported that 510 million people around the world, 90 percent of them in low and medium -income countries, were not repaired by vision damage. This means they could not see correctly because They had no glasses.
The consequences are huge: children with loss of vision in these countries are significantly less likely to be at school. One study has found that for those who attend school, those who have problems with uncorrected vision are learning half Like their peers with normal vision.
Thus, access to treatment is limited due to lack of trained staff and inability to integrate vision care into health systems. Children are not reflected in loss of vision and parents, and teachers do not understand the simple causes of eye problems that may manifest themselves in distraction, lack of physical coordination and behavior problems.
Mozambique has only 20 ophthalmologists, six or two ten years ago. Almost all of them are located in the capital Maputo in the south.
Dr. Da Gama completed his studies in India in 2017 and set up a clinic in Quelimane, a port city halfway along the Indian Ocean coast of Mosambique. But to his surprise he saw very few patients in the first year. He found that no one was referred to him, because healthcare professionals did not recognize healing eye diseases. He started traveling to local clinics to tell medical staff on screening and solutions.
He then joined the charity light for the world that sponsored him to complete a specialized training in pediatric eye care in Tanzania. They proposed a field program that shows teachers, community healthcare workers, traditional heales and local leaders how to see vision problems and refer children to the new Ophthalmology Department in Quelimane Hospital.
Now, several times a year, for up to months at once, he takes the mobile clinic to small communities to perform surgery with cataracts, glaucoma or strabism (incorrect eyes).
Cataracts cause almost half of the blindness that can be prevented in children; They may be genetic or the result of trauma (like a stick or stone in the eye) or untreated eye infections.
On their field roads, Dr. DA Gama other healthcare workers, how to perform simple operations and how to find out the conditions. “Traffic itself is not a problem: we can train in a week, two weeks how to work on a cataract,” he said. “But it’s how to identify children who need operations.”
The Mozambic Ministry of Health is trying to build awareness of the problems of vision and refractive errors for which a few glasses are a life -changing intervention.
Glasses or simple operations that keep children at school can change the future for their families and for the country as a whole. “If you have children less educated or with less skills,” he said, “the future of the economy was influenced.”
In Queliman, Dr. Da gamma also cases of retinoblastoma, retinal cancer. When patients come soon, they can save their lives, not if their eyes.
Camilo Rosario brought his daughter Grace (3) to his clinic in November from their home in the village 300 kilometers (about 185 miles) far away. A tumor stood out of her eye, causing her unbearable pain. Mr. Rosario said she began to complain about her eye a few weeks ago. He moved anxiously from his foot to his leg while Dr. Da Gama explained that he would work quickly to remove the tumor, but that he was worried that the disease was already in her brain.
Grace soon recovered from the first operation and kept her father with a bulky bandage around her head. But as Dr. Da gamma feared, she came too late; She died in early January.
Aminata Kaba was screened last year next to her high school classmates – and was surprised to find that she was short -sighted. After getting glasses, the school was significantly simpler, she said, and her grades soon improved. Now she said she would continue school and hopes to be a lawyer.
Screening of older children is easy; Coaxial cooperation from small is a much greater challenge, said Dr. Da gama. They rarely look where they need them for eye tests. The eyes, equipment, even his white coat, can be scary. He said he smiles and sings to disperse, and removed the coat if necessary.
“I like difficult things,” he said.
