WE ARE all used to appeals to patch up the world in various ways.
Most of these are worthy and benefit those whose cause they espouse. And the results can be immediate and vivid: money that we in the rich world - and that's us, whether or not we recognise ourselves in that description - send to support village proj
ects in Africa or help for the growing legions of Aids orphans in afflicted countries can mean an immense amount at the receiving end. Yet people might be forgiven for feeling that the world's need is never-ending, insatiable and all we are doing is applying sticking plasters.
And then along comes an organisation like Sightsavers International, working to alleviate blindness worldwide, and that doubt about our capacity to help evaporates. Here is something that can be done to bring spectacular and obvious relief to people suffering from one of the most distressing of conditions - the loss of sight. More to the point, perhaps, here is something that can be done to prevent that distress before it occurs.
Anyone who travels in the countries in which Sightsavers operates will know how common blindness is. My own familiarity with the problem is based mainly on my African experience: I travel regularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and speak to people involved in health work in countries in the region. What strikes me from these conversations is mainly the difficulties that doctors and public health officials there have in deciding which problem to tackle first. This has always been a dilemma in countries where resources are limited, but it became immensely more difficult once Aids struck. Suddenly, countries that had been making progress in tackling disease, such as tuberculosis, found themselves knocked back to square one virtually overnight. The threat posed by Aids was simply so great that it was difficult to allocate any funds to anything else. Hospital wards were more or less entirely filled by Aids patients, and drug budgets gobbled up by the demands of people afflicted by that cruel condition. In many African countries, health systems snapped under the strain.
One consequence of that is that the amount of money available for anything else was increasingly squeezed. Eye disease was one such area that suffered as a result of the Aids disaster - when health workers are struggling to bring relief to the dying, those who have non-life-threatening conditions must expect to take second place. So, even if small sums can transform eye health, these small sums simply cannot be spared.
Sightsavers exists to fill that gap. Not only does it provide valuable instruction that helps to encourage people to avoid eye infection, but it provides the simple and effective drugs which stop the progression of diseases that will cost people their sight. And then, for a very small sum, it pays for operations which restore the sight of those with reversible blindness. Sight returns - and lives are transformed. All for a tiny amount.
There surely can be few greater gifts than that of the restoration of sight. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine it. Imagine being unable to see your family; unable to see what is going on in the world around you. Imagine, then, the feeling when some stranger comes along and performs an operation on your eyes and gives you back the ability to see. Imagine being that stranger. Not everyone has the skill to do that work, but we can all be the stranger who reaches into his or her pocket and gives the few coins that pay for the drugs or for the surgeon who performs the cataract operation.
It is tempting, I suppose, when considering the suffering of Africa, to point out that aid has been poured into that continent, and things just seem to go from bad to worse. There is some truth in that - a great deal of foreign aid has been wasteful and counter-productive. But the help that Sightsavers and organisations of its sort give on the ground is very different. This is aid that cannot really be diverted to improper purposes; this is aid that can be seen to have the most dramatic and positive effect.
"Bid the sickness cease" was the optimistic rallying call of earlier medical missionaries in Africa. Well, that has not proved possible. But, in little corners, things are being done which are transforming lives and bringing the most profound relief - and joy - to people in immediate and often painful need. The restoration of sight to each person must be, quite frankly, a miracle. What follows in this special report shows us how those miracles are worked and how each of us can assist.
The full article contains 782 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
