04 December, 2003
BRA restores the vision of a little boy.
Read the story of Alexi DeLeon.
During one of the BRA’s Blindness Prevention mission trips in the bateyes in 2001, I was called by one of our onsite volunteer optometrists showing me an eight-year old child with a rare eye disease that required special eyeglasses and high cost treatment. His family was too poor to afford both in the Dominican Republic. As a result, Alexi was raised with limited vision and could not do the normal things other children do. The doctors offered BRA help by diagnosign Alexi’s eyes and providing preliminary treatment — and to custom-make the eyeglasses free for the child in New Hampshire. The child was practically blind. According to Sarah Hudson, the doctor who treated him, “only the glasses could bring back his normal vision.” Three months later, Dr. Hudson called and told me the greatest news, that she was able to make two special glasses. She then shipped them to us in New York to take to Alexi in the batey La Hagua in the Province of Monte Plata. One month later, I traveled to the batey where the mission took place and started to locate the child. I only had one photograph of him when he was being diagnosed. After asking several people, finally I was directed to his small shack where he lived with his grandmother. Both his father and mother had died. I told his grandmother who I was and she bursted into tears when I explained to her what I had in my hands — two pairs of glasses for Alexi. She shouted, calling the entire community to witness the miracle that was about to happen — that her grand child is about to receive the gift of life, his vision back. Men, women and children all stood by watching in suspense me handing one of the pairs to the child to fit in his eyes. Hesistatingly, Alexi put them onto his eyes and said, “I Can See!, I Can See!, I Can See!…look at me, I Can See!” He started to run uncontrollably, grabbed a small ball and threw it at another kid. The who community was in joy to see that one of their children will now be able to play, read and write. “We too were happy that our eye care intervention made a difference,” said Ulrick Gaillard, BRA’s Executive Director.
THE PROGRAM: Thanks to generous grants from the Riverside Church in New York, the Federal Association Order of Malta, Lions Clubs International, the New Jersey Lions EyeGlass Recycling Center and the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, BRA is now restoring and protecting vision for hundreds of impoverished residents in the bateyes through its Blindness Prevention Program.
The program entails training local health promoters and teachers to do eye basic screenings on children and adults. Detected cases of basic eye problems are referred each week to our volunteer optometrists who performs other tests or prescribes eye glasses. Sunglasses are also donated to patients. Cases of cataracts or glaucoma that require surgeries are referred to volunteer ophthalmologists to perform the surgeries. Many children and adults in the bateyes and other urban living sectors are rapidly losing their eye sights due to poor diet, unprotected exposures to sun glare or diseases. Caract is now the leading cause of blindness in the Domincan Republic. Most people living in the bateyes cannot afford a pair of eye glasses or treatment because of poverty. As a result, generations of these individuals will lose their chance of going to school, learning new professional skills or becoming productive for their families and communities. BRA’s Blindness Prevention Program helps reverse that possibility by providing permanent care through its Mobile Health Clinic and eye care missions.
The BRA’s Blidness Prevention Project is also supported in donated medicines, eyeglasses, sunglasses and equipment by the Alcon Laboratories, Catholic Medical Mission Board and New Jersey Eyeglass Recycling Center.
Your support is too critically needed as it will help a child see so that he/she can play and learn like other children. We also need volunteer ophthalmologists and optometrists to perform eye surgeries and to provide care. For a donation or volunteer opportunity, please contact Ulrick Gaillard at bateyrelief@mindspring.com or (917) 627-5026.
