yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Bringing Life-Changing Treatments to the Blind in India | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

The world is invisible to the blind people, but at the same time, the blind people withdraw themselves from the surrounding, and they make them invisible. Unless the people who are cited actively try to find them out, they will remain in the dark.

[Music] My first visit to Sundaran was with one great missionary. We traveled to an island; there was a small medical clinic. At the end of the day, he said, "Did you see how people are suffering here?" He just ignited my feeling.

My first introduction to blindness was my grandfather's. I used to sit beside him on his bed, and he used to put his hand on my head, on my shoulder, and try to feel how much I have grown up. He couldn't see me, but he could feel me. My grandfather is still with me. Whenever I treat a blind patient with the Cataract, his face comes in my mind. So maybe that was subconsciously in my mind, and that pulled me in the field of high.

[Music] Care for e. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] We came to this island to work in an organized way, 2 to 3 years back. Initially, people were not trusting us. Take the case of Muhammad; he went to a qu, and now Muhammad is totally blind. It's irreversible. Had there been a vision center, Muhammad could have gone to the vision center. That process could have saved Muhammad's [Music] eyes.

[Music] [Music] For there are many people affected by bilateral cataract at a very younger age. We call it hereditary cataract. Just think of Nasma; Nasma's mother also had the same situation. She couldn't afford treatment because of poverty, and she gave birth to five children. Out of five children, four had similar [Music] [Music] condition.

[Music] [Music] For when they become adolescent, the added fear is the sexual harassment. The girls always confine themselves inside the house; they don't go out.

[Music] [Music] There's a saying that when Muhammad doesn't come to the mountain, the mountain goes to Muhammad. Same is true for eye care. In remote communities, they collect the patients from the different islands by boat and by bus. They take them to the base hospital; the surgery is done, and they are sent back to their villages. The follow-up is done at primary care centers.

So that's the network now operating. We are recruiting more and more people from the island to train them up, expand the services. That way, we foresee that the network will spread, and people will access the service. That will create positive eye health-seeking behavior among the people of the [Music] island.

I was very moved by watching the life of Nasma. When they were going home, Nazma's father said, "Doctor, in the last 2 days, Nasma has become too naughty." He was very happy to say so, and I was happy to hear as well.

[Music] [Music]

More Articles

View All
Cocaine Shipment at JFK Airport | To Catch a Smuggler
[music playing] We’re headed to a warehouse. This one has a lot of European shipments, South American shipments, a lot of source countries for us for narcotics. So we’re gonna see what we can find over here. [music playing] Albert, take a look at this. …
What is Technological Singularity? | Origins: The Journey of Humankind
[Music] One of the apprehensions that people have about this technological singularity, which is really a metaphor borrowed from physics, to describe what happens when you go through a black hole. The center of a black hole, the singularity, is where the …
Beware: The Inverted Yield Curve
Once of you guys, it’s Graham here. So every now and then, I like to deviate a bit from real estate and personal finance to discuss some other topics of importance, and this is one of them. That would be the inverted yield curve, and this is a topic that’…
Unwanted Visitors- Deleted Scene | Life Below Zero
What I’m doing is the last people that were here, they’re supposed to bring some of their own tarps, spread them out, use their stuff. Um, but instead they use mine. Common courtesy would dictate cleaning them. That’s what I ask: hey, if you’re going to u…
Escaping a Venezuelan Prison | Locked Up Abroad
Enjoy your first day release. As I walked through the doors, I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t just some crazy dream. I might actually get away with this. My stomach’s churning over, tying itself up in knots. I got on the bus. I’m praying that I’m never …
Strategies for dividing by tenths
Let’s do a few more examples of thinking of strategies for dividing decimals. In the future, we’re going to come up with a more systematic way of doing it, but it’s really important to come up with some of these strategies because it gives you an intuitio…