18 Oct 2022

A total of 2 281 out of Botswana’s 7 000 cataract patients have had their sight restored through the national cataract surgery campaign that started last year, a Sekgoma Memorial Hospital eye doctor has revealed. 

Dr Ernesto Perez, an ophthalmologist, said at the  campaign’s closing ceremony in Serowe recently that his team managed to provide the sight restoring procedure to 889 people in 2021 and 1 392 this year. 

He commended the ophthalmology team of specialist nurses, support staff, eye health programme coordinators, surgical and eye wards, district ophthalmic nurses as well as district health management teams for a sterling job. 

“The team started operating patients in Boteti and Letsholathebe in August 2021 and reached a total of 133 patients,” he said. 

Dr Perez said in September of the same year, the procedure was carried out on 243 patients in Selebi-Phikwe, Bobonong and Mmadinare and 522 in Mahalapye two months later. 

For this year,  a target of 600 had been set for the month of June but was surpassed by 89 patients, he said.

Dr Perez said between September 19 and October 14,  treated 703 patients underwent surgery against a target of 600. 

He said while most patients were fell into the 50 and above age group, the oddity was an 18-year-old patient. 

The hospital’s superintendent, Dr Gaone Moloise praised the Ministry of Health for according Serowe District Health Management Team the opportunity to host the campaign, which turned out successful. 

He applauded his team for doing a good job despite the challenges encountered including a diarrhoea outbreak, which caused reassignment of resources. 

Dr Moloise stressed the need to reduce blindness as envisaged by the ministry’s National Prevention of Blindness Plan, whose aim was to eliminate preventable blindness by 2025. 

One of the procedure’s beneficiaries, 72-year-old Ms Galekanokwe Mmusi of Modikwana ward in Serowe explained that she developed a cataract in the 1990s but could not be operated right away as it had not yet matured for surgery. 

She said she lived with it until 2018 when she was nearly blind and decided to seek medical attention again.

 “In 2019 I booked for surgery but COVID-19 struck and everything stopped,” she said.

 Eventually she underwent surgery and is happy with the results. 

Ms Mmusi encouraged others who might be experiencing sight problems to seek medical attention. 

Another patient, Ms Motlalepula Ntshekisang, a teacher at Palapye’s Kediretswe Primary School, testified that she was blind for three years.

She was operated on in July and is grateful to have finally regained her sight. 

“I have had the most painful three years of my life. I could not see the food I was eating, I could not read and being a teacher it was very difficult to cope,” she said.

 Ms Ntshekisang said she had planned to retire but since she had regained her sight, she would work for two more years. 

She advised others not to wait until it was too late to undergo cataract surgery. BOPA