A little girl with an eye patch
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Patients after Trichiasis surgery
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ORBIS: Sight Saving and Life Saving (Part two)

Raymond Van Neste BA, MA

Shocking Statistics

Natalie Dendy, Fundraising Officer for ORBIS, told me that in the developing world 1000 children lose their sight every day and the reason for this is because out of all of the children in the world who suffer from blindness 90 per-cent live in developing countries. And, as already highlighted in part-one of this article, the worst statistic of all is that around half of these children will die within a short period of time after losing their sight.

The Need for Hope

I will never forget a course on Mental Health and Religion that I chose to study as a part of the necessary course work for a Masters degree in Pastoral Studies. I discovered that in the USA and Europe people who are incapacitated due to suffering from different forms of psychological illness especially older people suffer a lot and may not have any family or friends to care for them. During the last ten years a lot of research has been done in hospitals to see if not only medical relief but if any other form of relief, such as somebody to talk to, a hospital volunteer, or somebody visiting from a local church, can help people in hospital suffering in this way and as a result increase or improve the healing process.

Findings

Some of the most striking findings were that many people like this simply do not survive and the reason is because they have no hope. There is no hope in their lives and as a result no reason to live. A staggering statistic which came out of the findings was that all of the people who survived a long period of incapacity because of psychological illness revealed that they had hope. They had hope that life held something for them and they had something to hold on to and to look forward to. Also, the people who survived mostly had relatives or friends to help them to get through the difficult time. Many people in these circumstances lost hope because they believed nobody cared. Without going into too much detail the research for this course extended into a number of areas within society such as how this kind of hope or lack of it affects us all.

Other findings showed that in some of the most deprived areas of the inner cities of the UK where discrimination, sub-standard housing and severe poverty are commonplace there was also the highest rate of suicide and highest rates of serious psychological and physical illness due to being caught up in a never ending cycle of deprivation where there is no hope, hope that it was possible to 'break out' into a better life.

ORBIS Saves

The connection here with ORBIS is that ORBIS is a sure sign of hope for many people not only saving sight but by offering a reason to continue with living and a chance of a better life. If there is hope then this in itself is a saving grace because it saves ultimately and gives strength to those people who need it the most. And there is hope of having what we take for granted which is to have medical facilities which are affordable and available.

In an article on the ORBIS web-site entitled: 'Simple Pleasures' there is a story about somebody called Yushi Fung who lives and works in China. On a recent mission to Kunming in China ORBIS were able to help Yushi Fung to gain her sight, with a cataract operation. I think that the point of the story for me is that the operation didn't just give her back her eye-sight but gave her back her life. Yushi Fung has worked he entire life in the fields and to lose her livelihood would mean losing everything. The restoration of her sight meant that she could have her life back. In the developing world in many cases the loss of sight means also the loss of livelihood and the ability to feed their family.

Loss of Sight in the Developing World is Devastating and Causes Terrible Suffering

A few years ago I remember vividly being in a bicycle accident where I broke my leg and suffered other serious injuries being hospitalized for two weeks and as a result putting me out of action for a year. The effect of this on my life was devastating and far outreached the actual injuries. From being a very active person to suddenly becoming incapacitated I suffered a lot and as time went on I even became further seriously ill as a result. Therefore, I can understand how it is possible to lose hope and then be close to losing your life as a result of avoidable blindness and where there is a great loss not just in terms of the actual loss of sight.

My heart goes out to those people around the world whose suffering is doubled again and again because of suffering in this way. Where there is already a great need to survive in a tough environment with no medical facilities and where the loss of health would mean not being able to eat through not being able to provide for your family and where family members are the related victims the loss is devastating. The point is that when a person's basic needs have been taken away from them then this causes great suffering and another point is that in the developing world such suffering can almost completely be eliminated if the facilities were there, the same facilities that we have here in the UK and in the Western World.

Conclusion

The work of ORBIS in its constant mission working with medical staff from around the world and many volunteers on an international basis does a lot more than saving the sight of people who need it the most. I think that it also save lives because there is no compromise in such work. The need is there and ORBIS does its best to help. The aim of ORBIS is to eliminate all avoidable blindness. I really believe that such a mission is possible with your help. We live in a world where there are no easy answers or solutions to a lot of things. It's an imperfect world but this does not mean that there is no hope or that we cannot achieve an ambition or challenge. The challenge is there and we can achieve it together.

Notes:

I would like to thank ORBIS for providing and allowing photographs to be used for the article on this web-site about ORBIS. The photograph of the picture of the little girl with the patch and also the picture of the patients after Trichiasis surgery with patches, both photographs were taken by Kiran Ridley /ORBIS

Raymond Van Neste. ORBIS: Sight Saving and Life Saving - parts one and two. Copyright 2007 ©

Related Links
http://www.orbis.org.uk