A stitch in time: Cataract surgery revives career

Caroline Wagner — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 17:07:26 +0000

Holding an awl in one hand, and a man’s leather shoe in the other, Abraham in Kenya demonstrates how he pierces a hole in the leather before stitching it up to make a repair. It’s part of his job as a cobbler that, for months, he was unable to do.

A couple years ago, Abraham started having trouble with his vision. His work suffered as he had more and more difficulty focusing his eyes on the tiny stitches and delicate work of shoe repair. He began pricking himself repeatedly with the needles, and eventually, he couldn’t get the needles threaded at all. Finally, he had to shutter his business.

At age 65, Abraham’s six children are now grown up, but his income was essential to supporting his grandkids. Without being able to repair shoes, he had to rely on his wife’s earnings as a farmer to get by.

The loss of income wasn’t the only financial difficulty exacerbated by his vision loss. Because he couldn’t see well enough to punch in his PIN on his phone, Abraham started giving the number to shop attendants while making purchases. Eventually he realized that some of them were stealing from him and transferring additional money to themselves before handing the phone back over.

Abraham went to a nearby clinic for help with his vision. He received a prescription for eyedrops, but his condition continued to worsen despite regularly using the drops.

One day, Abraham met one of our community health volunteers, who was going house to house doing eye health screenings. The volunteer gave Abraham a referral to the eye unit at our partner facility, the Iten County Referral Hospital, where he was diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes.

Made possible through the generosity of our donors, the Iten Eye Unit was established in 2023 in partnership between Operation Eyesight and the Elgeyo Marakwet County Government. Along with the eye unit, we’ve been running a community eye health program, which has screened more than 100,000 people to date.

Just weeks later, Abraham went back to the Iten Eye Unit. The surgeries on both eyes were a success, and when our staff caught up with him, they were impressed with how quickly he had bounced back. He has started repairing shoes again and is happy to be taking care of his family with the income. He has also become an eye health ambassador, telling his neighbours about the Iten Eye Unit and how eye surgery transformed his life.

Please consider making a donation to help more people like Abraham get back to work!

Story written with files from Caroline Ikumu.

The post A stitch in time: Cataract surgery revives career appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

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A stitch in time: Cataract surgery revives career