The other kids used to make fun of Netsanet

We met nine-year-old Netsanet at our recent training program in Hawassa, Ethiopia. It was clear she had a condition called strabismus, which causes the eyes to look in different directions when focusing.

Over time, strabismus can have a permanent impact on vision and can even cause blindness in the affected eye. At the same time, children with strabismus are at higher risk of anxiety and depression. As her father told us, “The kids would make fun of her all the time, and she would usually cry and worry about it.”

But recently, Netsanet had surgery to correct her vision thanks to our amazing team of Volunteer Faculty. She now has a lifetime of healthy vision ahead and can join in with her school friends without being teased.

This couldn’t have happened without supporters like you. Make your generous donation today to help provide sight-saving and life-changing vision care to vulnerable children and people worldwide.

When Orbis’s Volunteer Faculty members arrived in Hawassa, no local eye care providers had the knowledge or skills to treat kids with strabismus, like Netsanet. The need for pediatric care was great.

So, over the course of five days, our Volunteer Faculty members, Dr. Daniel Neely and Dr. Andrew Choyce, worked alongside local eye care teams to give them the training and tools they needed to perform pediatric strabismus surgery.

Three ophthalmologists and ten anesthesia staff from the local hospital received hands-on training and opportunities to participate, while six residents had an opportunity to observe.

As Dr. Neely says, “It's not just delivering direct care for people and patients; it is [about] creating a skill that can be replicated and that becomes magnified at this exponential effect. We might operate on twenty-five people this week, but if we teach [local providers] to do what we are doing this week, then they may go to operate on five hundred or a thousand patients with the same condition.”

Together, we can make sure that no one lives a life of unnecessary blindness, just because of where they were born.

You can help us keep that promise. Your generous donations support vital in-person trainings, like our recent program in Ethiopia, as well as training through Cybersight, our award-winning telemedicine platform. Cybersight provides ongoing support to doctors around the world to supplement in-person training.

Most of all, you make a sight-saving and life-changing difference for people like Netsanet every day. Donate below to ensure bright futures for even more children.