Restore sight to children like Mariya, who are living in poverty with cataracts.
Your donation DOUBLED this Easter
Easter Appeal: Your Donation Doubled
Nobody should be blind just because they are poor.
Mariya, 6, and Ikilima, 3, from rural Nigeria, West Africa, were born blind because of cataracts in both of their eyes.
“Before they turned 40 days old, they started crying non-stop. Then a dot appeared in their eyes. By 50 days, you could see it clearly,” explained their mother, Balkisu. This dot was the white, milky film of cataracts.
The difficulty of accessing eye care
For many of the most marginalised people living in the world’s poorest places, access to basic eye care is almost impossible. For Balkisu, the cost of surgery to restore her daughters’ sight was out of reach.
As they grew older, Mariya and Ikilima were at risk of becoming permanently blind. That’s because cataracts can prevent the proper development of the pathways between a child’s eyes and their brain. If they are left untreated, blindness caused by cataracts can become untreatable.
This Easter, you can give sight and have your donation doubled.
Your Easter donation DOUBLED
This Easter, a group of CBM UK donors will double every pound you donate, up to £70,000. This means that any gift you make today will have twice the impact.
Transforming lives in Nigeria
This Easter, together we can come closer to a world in which nobody is needlessly blind. And we can transform the lives of children like Mariya and Ikilima.
With your support, CBM UK is working in partnership with the ECWA Eye Hospital to provide essential eye care to families in Nigeria.
Eye Health in Nigeria
The northern region of Nigeria, where our project is based, contains the highest number of people living with blindness in the country.
A significant number of children need specialised eye care, but there are very few paediatric ophthalmologists in the region. In fact, eye care like this is unavailable in many of the countries we work in.
Together, alongside local partners, CBM enables people living in poverty to access eye health services. And this includes cataract surgery to restore their sight.
The difference you can make this Easter
With your support, CBM and our partners are there every step of the way. We provide screening to identify children living with sight loss and we support people in hard to reach places with transport to hospitals. As well as as this, we train surgeons and fund equipment and medication for cataract surgery. By restoring sight, we help break the cycle of poverty and disability.
Last year an outreach team from our partner hospital in Nigeria visited Mariya and Ikilima. As a result, the children and their mother were transported to the eye hospital where they were diagnosed with cataracts. They needed urgent surgery to save their sight – and thanks to CBM supporters, this was possible.
For children like Mariya and Ikilima, your support can be the difference between lifelong blindness and restored sight.
