Geelong, Australia
Some 94 million people around the world are currently in need of cataract surgery with the global coronavirus pandemic only lengthening the backlog, according to Christian disability-inclusive international development agency CBM Australia.
Mariska Meldrum, campaign manager for CBM’s Miracles Day, witnessing children in the Philippines have cataract surgery in 2017. PICTURE: Courtesy of CBM Australia.
Mariska Meldrum – campaign manager for CBM Australia’s Miracles Day, an annual event being held this Thursday, 18th August, to raise funds for surgery to remove cataracts from people in some of the world’s poorest nations – said that among those urgently in need of the surgery are children who were born with cataracts.
Meldrum, who was herself born with a cataract and remained blind in her right eye until the age of 35, said that the longer it takes to reach children with cataract surgery, the lesser the chance of the child’s vision being fully restored.
“That’s where cataract surgery, particularly for children, is really quite urgent,” said Meldrum. “So what we had during COVID lockdowns [was that] we had the backlog of adults but we were also trying to find ways to still be able to operate on these children.”
Cataracts, which are one of the leading causes of blindness around the world, cause a clouding of the lens in the eye – based on her own experience, Meldrum describes it as “like seeing out of foggy glasses or a foggy glass windscreen” – and can occur in one or both eyes.
“They reduce your clear vision and can cause permanent, lifelong damage and blindness” Meldrum said.
While there’s a lot involved in training ophthalmologists, CBM say that once trained, an ophthalmologist can remove as many as 6,000 cataracts in a year. The surgery can take as little as 12 minutes and costs an average of about $A33 – a figure which Meldrum equates to about a week’s worth of take-away coffees.
Meldrum said that for a child born with cataracts in both eyes, having the operation done can dramatically change their life.
“For that child, that means going…to school, being able to work in the future. It has an enormous ripple effect on the rest of their life…So if we can detect cataracts early and treat them early enough in children, their eyesight can continue then to develop normally and it won’t prevent them from going to school.”
We rely on our readers to fund Sight's work - become a financial supporter today!
For more information, head to our Subscriber's page.
The impacts of cataracts can go beyond the individual.
“We’ve got grandparents in countries like Tanzania where their grandchild has to stay home from school and lead the grandparent around with a stick because, without that help, the grandparent can’t move around the village. So it effects not only the person with the cataract but their familes, and, in some cases, their community.”
Part of CBM’s work involves outreach screening which involves screening for cataracts among children living in harder-to-reach areas.
“In a lot of cases, people can’t afford to travel to hospital to have surgery, so that’s something that also prevents them having it,” said Meldrum. “And so CBM provides that transportation for the person and their family member whose accompanying them.”
CBM said it has been able to provide sight for more than 300,000 people previously afflicted by cataracts since the first Miracles Day was held 10 years ago. This year, they’re hoping to raise enough funds to provide another 52,000 surgeries.
To support CBM Australia’s Miracles Day, head to miraclesday.com.au or call 131 226.
