See the Change: Tuesday
The team are travelling to an even more rural location to find and collect more patients.
Join Precious Chirwa on the road as he heads out to Mwansambo rural hospital...
Back in the District Hospital, Dorothy is celebrating with her daughter and granddaughter. Her determination has paid off and she can see again! By the afternoon she is home again.
“I feel like I’ve been given another life! I may be aging but with my sight back I can live a normal life despite being old... I can go to the toilet by myself. Independence means a lot to me because I can do things by myself. I’ll be able to wash my clothes and even make food for my grandchildren”.
Meet Mafunasi
Several new cataract patients have also arrived, collected from Mwansambo. Mafunasi, 85, is one of them. Without the transport, she couldn’t have come to the hospital: “Even coming out of the house was like a long journey”, she explains.
Mafunasi is excited that her sight might be restored. But after examining her, Dr Vincent Moyo from Nkhoma explains that there is a complication. As well as cataracts, she has damage to her eye due to the eye infection trachoma.
Trachoma used to be one of the leading causes of blindness in Malawi. Last year, the World Health Organisation declared that Malawi had eliminated the disease as a public health problem, but a few isolated cases still exist.
The cataract in Mafunasi’s right eye can be removed today. But because of the damage to the left eye from trachoma, she will need to return for further treatment before they can safely remove the cataract.
Follow us again tomorrow to find out about how Mafunasi’s operation has gone. We will also like to show you around the operating theatre and introduce you to the surgeons who are carrying out these sight-restoring operations.
Prayer of the Day
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” Isaiah 52:7
Heavenly Father, thank you today for the outreach team who travelled into even more remote parts of the Malawian countryside, bringing the good news of sight-saving surgery to more people. Thank you for their hard work and commitment, journeying across challenging terrain and deliberately seeking out people in need of treatment. We pray for outreach teams to have wisdom in their work, to find the people most in need, and be able to explain cataract surgery clearly and carefully. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Christian Blind Mission UK is registered with the Charity Commission of England and Wales as charity number 1058162, and with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator as charity number SC041101.
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