Gladys Khoza, 84, expressed her joy after being among 133 people who regained their sight during a "marathon" of cataract surgeries conducted by South African doctors at two hospitals over two weekends last month.
"Wow," she murmured as a nurse removed the bandage covering one of her eyes, the day after the operation, and the world reappeared before her eyes.
"Can you see me?" asked the nurse. "Very well," replied Mrs. Khoza, a broad smile lighting up her face.
In South Africa, patients in the public health system can wait years on waiting lists for relatively common cataract operations, and officials indicated that some of those helped by this initiative had been waiting since 2019 to be able to see properly again.
Cataracts are a common problem, often age-related, characterized by the clouding of the lens.
The procedure involves inserting a new artificial lens.
For Ms. Khoza, who explained that she could not see out of one eye and had problems with the other, this simple surgical procedure represents a considerable gain for her quality of life at an advanced age.
"I just wanted to be able to see," she told the Associated Press.
Today, after nearly a year of waiting, some of his favorite activities — seeing his family members clearly, reading his Bible and watching television soap operas — are possible again.
Dr. Tebogo Fakude, who was part of a team of doctors who volunteered to perform the operations at two regional hospitals near Johannesburg, explained that his own mother was blind and appreciated what he was doing.
“We love what we do: restoring sight,” he said. “It’s a small organ, but it has a huge impact on the human body and on people’s lifestyles.”
During this three-day surgical marathon at Pholosong Regional Hospital in South Africa, a new patient was brought into the operating room approximately every hour.
Soothing gospel music was played in the operating room to lift the morale of the doctors.
Using a microscope, ophthalmologists made tiny incisions in the eye for each procedure, removed the clouded lens, and replaced it with an artificial lens.
Outside the operating room, patients waited nervously for their turn.
According to the World Health Organization, at least 2.2 billion people worldwide suffer from some form of visual impairment.
For about a billion of them, these problems could have been avoided or they are still waiting for treatment.
Cataracts are one of the main causes of these disorders: nearly 100 million people are affected and half of them still need surgery, according to the WHO.
In Africa, this figure rises to 75% of people needing cataract surgery who are still not being treated, according to a study published in March by the journal Lancet.
Delays in surgical procedures are a major problem in South Africa, where public hospitals care for more than three-quarters of the population of 62 million, and where limited resources mean that emergency procedures and serious operations take priority over non-urgent surgeries.
Furthermore, approximately 300,000 new cases of cataracts are diagnosed each year in South Africa, Mr. Fakude indicated.
Health associations say South Africa was facing a huge backlog, with more than 240,000 people waiting for cataract surgery at the end of last year, and more than 35,000 people in the most populous province of Gauteng — where this surgical marathon was organized — suffer from cataract-related blindness.
