Skip to content

Cataract surgery gave Marie-Jeanne and her daughter their sight back

Two generations of one family had been losing their vision to the same treatable condition.

Cataract surgery is one of the fastest operations in medicine. Without access to it, a person simply goes blind.

Losing sight together

Marie-Jeanne and her daughter Germaine were both losing their vision to cataracts. In a household where sight is already scarce, the loss compounds: there is no one left to guide, to fetch water, to earn.

Two short operations

Cataract removal takes a matter of minutes per eye and needs no long hospital stay. Both mother and daughter were treated free of charge during the same field service.

What restored sight actually changes

The moment the dressings come off is the one that gets photographed. What matters afterwards is quieter: being able to work, to move around independently, to recognise a face across a room.