Bringing Sight to the Blind

Alberto Valenzuela talks with Celeste perrino Walker about how ADRA is preforming micacles in Africa you need to see to believe.

The hospital at Glei in Togo, Africa, rises majestically from its surroundings like a Cinderella’s castle. The hospital was built with funding from Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA)– Sweden, but had to be closed for lack of patients and funding. Then Dr Edgard D’Oliviera and his wife, Cristina, arrived en route to Rwanda. They began working at the facility and turned it into an ophthalmological facility, specialising in cataract surgery.

Just before they performed the very first operation, they received an ultimatum from one of the chiefs: “The previous hospital promised a lot of things and nothing was delivered. Now you’ve come and promise to make miracles.

Because it takes a miracle to make a blind person to see, if that woman doesn’t see after your surgery,” the chief told them seriously, “pack up your things and leave. We won’t want you in Glei.”

After some 1000 operations, all the chiefs are happy. “With every successful surgery, two people are liberated: the blind person and the ones who cared for them,” says Dr D’Oliviera.

So effective is their work, people come from countries around Togo for treatment. While there are five ophthalmologists in Lome, people go to Glei to have eye surgery with the D’Olivieras—up to 10 a day.

Monique Bakkah, a nine-month-old girl, born blind due to cataracts, is to be operated on. She will see for the first time. She will have to wear glasses through childhood and then will undergo another operation when she is 15 or 16.

A 70-year-old woman who had cataract surgery and who’d been totally blind for four years, after the 40- minute surgery, she could see the doctor’s fingers in front of her face.

The technique used in Togo is very advanced, with the hospital at Glei the only one using it in western Africa.

Other ophthalmologists use a technique that requires the patient to wear glasses.

Edgard and Cristina see an average of 25 new patients and 40 “controls” every day. The controls are people who are under treatment or have had surgery at Glei. On the Friday we were there they had more than 100 patients.

The hospital has room for about 20 patients, but a relative has to take care of them while they are hospitalised.

The light of Glei shines through the work of Edgard and Cristina D’Olviera and from the eyes of each patient who receives new sight.

“We don’t know how long we are going to stay in Togo,” Cristina says. “We need to think about the future of our children. But we don’t want to think about it now. There’s a lot to do in Glei. There’s a lot to do in Togo.”