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  • About
  • Our Team
  • Support Us
  • News
  • Stories
  • Contact
  • Give Monthly

25 years of restoring sight and changing lives!

It was just another day for eye surgeon, Dr Helen Roberts MBE FRCOphth, but her days are not quite like anyone else’s. It takes her around 15 minutes to restore sight to a person blinded by cataracts, and she might treat up to 20 patients in a day. On this particular day, however, Helen’s routine was interrupted by the arrival of a large cake which her staff had secretly had baked for her in celebration of the fact that it has been 25 years since Helen decided to dedicate her life to Kenya. And during that time Kwale Eye Centre has seen over 500,000 people and carried out over 35,000 sight restoring eye operations.
That’s quite an achievement, and Helen celebrated it by sharing the cake with her staff and all the patients in her clinic that day.
Helen’s clinic, Kwale Eye Centre (KEC) lies just inland from Mombasa’s famous Diani Beach. And, while dinner at one of Diani’s glossy hotels will cost about the same as making a blind man see, most of the local people are so poor they can’t even scrape together the money for the subsidised fees: so they pay with a chicken, a few mangoes; or a smile.
KEC never turn a patient away. Which is probably just as well when you consider the following; Kenya’s rate of blindness is ten times that of the Western world; of the world’s 45 million blind people 90% live in the developing world and of the millions of Kenyans who go blind, 80% need never have done so. Blindness, tragically, is largely preventable.
The magic of having one’s sight restored in 15 minutes, which is all the time it takes to ‘do’ a cataract, affects people differently. Helen tells the story of one old man who had been blind for most of his life. Persuaded by the community worker to come into the clinic, he had his operation, walked out into the carpark, threw away his white stick, summarily dismissed the small boy who had led him around, and danced off down the road. Another man who had been blind for 15 years returned to his village and shrieked with laughter over how much his neighbours had aged. Best of all is the tale of the community worker who came across a blind man up a tree, from which a noose dangled. He was sobbing in despair; his life seemed to be worthless. The community worker lured him down from the tree, onto the back of his
motorbike, and in to the clinic. The next time he saw the man, he was up a tree again: laughing, singing and cutting down coconuts.
All this comes at a cost; KEC is entirely funded by charity, the rest by the work at the clinic for which people can pay plus Helen’s endless round of fundraising events, ‘What better gift can you give than the gift of sight?’ is her campaign slogan. What indeed ? £60 pays for a cataract operation in an adult and £360 sponsors support for a partially sighted child through schooling in a mainstream situation. It’s not much to ask for such a precious gift.
Helen herself asks for very little. Merely the money to keep her clinic running. And, despite that fact that in 2001 she was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II, she remains inspired only by her gift. ‘When you take the eye pad off after cataract surgery and the patient can see for the first time in years’ she says, ‘ they give a little smile. Then that smile grows and grows until it stretches from ear to ear. That’s my reward’.
So, if you’d like to fuel such a smile, why not spend the best £60 you’ll ever spend.
Click the button to read a report on the past 25 years of the Eye Centre.
Read more...

patient stories

Morgan


Morgan's mother was delighted when she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Her place is society was assured, but Morgan's world was dark. His mother could not understand why he would not look back at her face when she looked at him or follow objects with his eyes. This did not improve and when Morgan was 5 months old his mum heard about a screening the Eye Centre were doing at her local market, 5km from their home.


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5 month old Morgan before surgery
We found that the focusing lenses in his eyes, instead of being clear and helping him to see were cloudy. That stopped him seeing. The only solution was surgery to both eyes under general anaesthetic. His mother was of course very worried. She'd heard rumours from local people that the Eye Centre exchanged non seeing eyes with goats eyes!!! She was afraid her son might not wake up from the general anaesthetic. But she trusted the Eye Centre to treat her son, and now his future is now a bright one. He can see!
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Morgan just after his surgery
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Morgan can see! He loves his new glasses!

Mary

Mary had been blind for over one year. Her trouble began when she was badly hurt by a sharp branch which flicked into her eye while she was walking through the bush bringing the cattle home from grazing. She went to a witch doctor but the eye became blind. Then the right eye rapidly lost sight also. It reached the point where she could no longer cook or make tea. Her husband was long gone and she was totally dependent on her daughter to cook and care for her. ​
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Here she is, with her daughter, the morning after surgery. We asked her what sort of difference being able to see again would make to her life:

"I am able to cook and clean and make tea and visit my neighbours again," she said.  "I can go to the bathroom whenever I want to.  Its like being given back my life when I thought that it was over" 

Nicodemus

Nicodemus first noticed his sight was failing a few years ago. It grew progressively worse until he was completely blind. He lived for 6 months in total darkness before he sought treatment from our clinic in Taita county, Southern Kenya. A simple cataract surgery gave him his sight back. When his surgeon asked him how this would change his life, he laughed with delight and proclaimed: "I can't wait to get back to my farm to plant maize and beans, and bring you some so you will do my second eye!"
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Charity Commission number: 1053222

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