Your gift today will ensure that women and girls like Umanzi are no longer needlessly blind. You can transform their lives.
Umanzi’s husband worked far away to earn an income and support his family. This left her caring for their young children. Like all mothers, Umanzi was willing to do anything for her children. “As a mother, I wanted to be around and see my children grow, graduate, and get married, but I was depressed,” Umanzi said.
In every region in the world, women are more likely to be blind than men... - Dr Ciku Mathenge, first female ophthalmologist trained by The Foundation in Africa Women living in poverty are particularly at risk of becoming blind and are less likely to access care for preventable or treatable eye care conditions. They are the ones who need our help urgently but are often the hardest to reach. Your compassion and kindness can help stop them from going permanently blind.
The reasons for this are varied. For some women, it's cultural - the health of males in the family is often prioritised over women and girls. For others, a lack of education means they aren't even aware they can get help.
Often, women impacted by avoidable blindness are in remote areas and are unable to travel outside their village. With your help, in the next 12 months, we can reach over 130,000 Kenyans and screen their eyes to detect conditions and offer treatments, including surgery and glasses.
This is the content within the modal window.
Clementine was just one of those people facing this scenario: she was desperate to help her son, but the village where they live is hours from the nearest hospital. Travelling is really not an option for people in her situation.
Without outreach programs like the ones run by The Fred Hollows Foundation, finding help would have been very difficult. But a community health worker visited the area where Eric lives, and contacted Dr Ciku Mathenge, a leading eye surgeon who has restored sight to thousands of people
Training more female eye health workers can encourage women and girls to access services. However, women often face greater discrimination and challenges in balancing their work roles with their considerable family and community responsibilities. With your support, we can train and support more female health workers.
Your kindness helped send a Foundation-trained health worker to visit Umanzi's home.
He told her that people in Australia would pay for her surgery to treat her blinding cataracts. They would even cover her transport to the hospital for treatment.
Umanzi was amazed.
The day after surgery the patch was lifted from her eye. Umanzi told us: "The moment the patch was removed from my left eye, I felt I had come from a completely different world … my life changed."
She and her husband held each other, their faces bright with happiness.
Fred once said “… having a care and concern for others is the highest of human qualities.”
You have shown us this quality time and again. With your support, The Foundation’s sight-restoring work has prevented tens of thousands of people from going blind and helped ease the pressure on Kenya’s eye health system.
But there is still work to be done. It is estimated that each year, about 14,500 new cases of cataract are discovered in Kenya. Your support today can improve the lives of thousands of people, securing their future and giving them something wonderful to look forward to - the gift of sight.
Even though Fred is no longer with us, we can still finish the job he started.
With your support, in Kenya over the next year, The Fred Hollows Foundation plans to:
Your support for these actions can improve the lives and future opportunities of millions of people in Kenya.
Thanks to you, we can still carry on Fred’s vision and end avoidable blindness.
Please donate today to restore sight...