Sight Flight - Kwa Zulu Natal

Look into my eyes and hear what I'm not saying, for my eyes speak louder than my voice ever will.

     ~Anonymous

As a doctor for the past 32 years I am keenly aware of the fact that you can tell a lot by looking into a patient's eyes. You can find signs of diabetes, high blood pressure, cataracts, glaucoma, tumors, anemia and even high cholesterol to name a few. But when looking into the eyes of patients in Africa we can tell you a lot more, especially if our own eyes are truly open. The Mercy Air Sight Flight program allows our medical teams to see into the eyes of people in Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland where we are able to provide much needed eye care in a professional, efficient and loving way. Not only do our teams perform detailed eye exams, provide prescription glasses and arrange free sight restoring cataract surgeries performed by Board certified ophthalmologists, our teams do so much more.

When we look into people's eyes often we can see desperation, we can see tears, we can see fear, we can see frustration and worst of all we can sometimes see hopelessness. But later, we  see the same eyes after they have been treated by our teams and we see changes. Where there was once sadness we now see joy. Where once we saw despair we can now see happiness. Where once we saw hopelessness we now see hope. The gift of sight is precious and by curing blindness through cataract surgery or by giving patients a pair of eyeglasses which brings their life back into focus, their eyes can see their world in a new and better way. The once blind can now take care of themselves and their families while those who received prescription glasses can now work and read again. It literally changes their world. You can see it in their eyes.

Thank you.

Roger.

For the Mercy Air team