Giving the gift of sight in rural Mpumalanga: Doctors take a ‘leave of purpose’ from their normal jobs to experience a stint at the Tshemba Foundation that will change their patients’ lives, as well as theirs
There are few things more rewarding than watching a line of patients, in their heavily strapped eyepatches, waiting with an air of expectation, followed by their collective shouts of joy as, one by one, their eyepatches are removed to let in the world that had been covered in a mist of grey.
These particular cataract surgeries were conducted by a whole team of ophthalmology surgeons from one hospital in Pretoria who volunteered with Tshemba as part of a particularly powerful team-building exercise. The clinic houses a dedicated team of nurses and an ophthalmology specialist nurse. Together, they offer a service that is very rare in the setting of rural healthcare. The local clinics identify and refer patients to the eye clinic, which means the existence of the clinic has made an incredible impact on the local community.Even though my fiancé and I are both generalists, we were able to get involved in several ophthalmology-related programmes.
It’s a long and never-ending vocation. As one of the ophthalmologists remarked to us during one particularly memorable visit, “We could move up here, do ten cataracts a day for a month and not even be close to running out of work!”
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