The Calpe-based NGO Visió sense fronteres returns to Sierra Leone in a new campaign for the prevention and treatment of avoidable blindness. This time, not only adults will be operated on for cataracts, but also babies and young children with this condition.
Nine people are taking part in this campaign: two ophthalmologists, two optometrists, two nurses, a general practitioner, a paediatrician and, for the first time, an anaesthetist, which will allow cataract operations to be carried out on young children, as in this case general anaesthesia is required to perform the surgery.
According to the coordinator of this NGO, Isabel Signes, cataracts in children are uncommon in Europe but not so much in Africa. "There are some cataracts that are congenital. There, due to nutritional problems or problems the mother may have during pregnancy, it is more common, so there are children who are born with cataracts," she pointed out. And in this case, the most advisable thing to do is to operate as soon as possible, otherwise the child could be blind for life. "For example, if you operate on the child at the age of 14, it may already be too late because you have to take into account that when we are born the eye is not yet formed and needs a period of six or seven years to do so, a process in which light stimulation and the images that reach the brain will be fundamental. If the eye misses that period of formation and stimulation, even if you remove the cataract, it will be too late.
The expedition will leave on Tuesday 28 March for Sierra Leone and will remain in the country until 9 April. During the first few days, a screening of the population will be carried out to identify candidates for these operations and then the surgeries will be carried out. The campaign is being carried out in Sierra Leone in collaboration with the religious association Don Bosco Fambul, which has built a hospital in the area where Visió sense fronteres will perform the surgeries.
The campaign counts once again with the collaboration of the Calpe Town Council.