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Our Impact
11-year-old Samuel had been blinded from cataracts since he was a toddler when he came to us in 2021. Because school teachers in Pignon don’t have the resources or training to effectively teach visually impaired children, Samuel had never set foot in a classroom. Our eye surgeons immediately went to work removing his severe cataracts, giving him the opportunity to finally access an education and be with children his own age.
Magdala, a neurodiverse 28-year-old woman, lost her ability to feed herself and walk unassisted when cataracts took her vision at the age of 11. She was ecstatic when our eye surgeons told her they could give her back her sight. When the bandages came off and she realized she could see, she was so excited that she broke out into a run. Thanks to the gift of sight, she has regained her independence.
Jacques and his two teenage sons didn’t know they suffered from glaucoma when they came to see us for a check-up. Because of early detection by our eyecare team, we were able to halt the progression of their blinding eye diseases by educating them on the importance of treatment and arming them with a years’ supply of sight-saving glaucoma drops.
11-year-old Pierre and 14-year-old Frantz were both completely blind when they showed up at our eyecare clinic. The cousins had both lost their vision to severe cataracts and we immediately went to work to give them back their sight. When the patches were removed the morning after their cataract surgeries, the boys were elated. The first thing they asked was, “Can we go to school now?”
Tiya was shopping at a vegetable market in her rural village when she heard a rumor that our eyecare team was in Pignon. She didn’t know if the rumor was true, but desperate for the chance to give her 18-month-old son, Pierre, back his sight, she used her last $3 to pay for the hour and a half motorcycle ride to Pignon. Our eyecare team had never operated on a patient so young and when the patches were removed and he was able to see, we all fought back tears of joy.
When Claudette and her mom saw our team in Pignon, she wasn’t looking for eyecare help. Instead, she was hoping for a different medical miracle for her daughter. The 8-year-old had gotten a deep tissue injury in her leg a few months earlier when a tree fell on it and it had festered into such a severe infection that it was nearing the point of amputation. As luck would have it, one of our eye doctors also had training as a wound specialist and was able to save her leg.
