October, 2006  What would a Canadian blind child's chances have been?
By David Downham

What would a Canadian blind child's chances have been in Canada 50 years ago? What could he have learned or done with his life? What would a family's expectations and perhaps resolutions for this child have been? What about now? I think about everything from Helen Keller to a local high school teacher I once met with her specially trained Golden Retriever, the home care, schools for these special needs, audio books and on.

Yesterday I spent the day at Mae Tao Clinic with a ten year old boy, blind since birth. The boy's sister and another young man with scattered vision in his left eye were with us along with several hundred others waiting to see two Scottish doctors who come here twice a year for a week.

Two days ago we arrived and registered and then yesterday we waited from 8 am until 3:30 and I watched the procession, the hope and eagerness in the faces of these very patient patients.

When we arrived there were probably 35 elderly people in the first line. Each with a bright clean white bandage over one eye (later it was like a parade of movie stars as the fancy 50 cent sunglasses were donned). We were under the shelter but during the day it rained to my best count 19 times.

Last week Sunday on a visit to the Hostel I noticed the little boy playing a classic (here) game of rocks where a pulled back finger is used as a catapult. Seeing his opaque eyes I asked the children using our sign language and they covered their eyes with their hands in reply.

Kyaw Oo is 10. When he was born his eyes did not open for 5 weeks and then remained swollen, settling to their present state. At 4 o'clock when we met I joked with the doctors making comparisons to the waiting lists in the Canadian Healthcare system.

This Scottish humanitarian Opthamologist had arrived at 8:30 and despite the heat and humidity, his only food being some fruit eaten for lunch while he looked over reports, was alert and fresh and interested, when he told me that likely because of some infection this boy's mother had during the pregnancy, the cornea was affected. He said putting a translanted or artificial cornea was possible with a child, better success when he was an adult - but this could be done only in the West.

As to the other boy, the same story but he had one good eye and a some disturbance in the other and he would have to deal with that. If he lost his good eye then an operation on his bad eye could be done …. in the West.

We were a sad and soggy group by then and the kids went off to eat Mae Tao Clinic food with one of our Hostel's alumni who is now a medic at the Clinic and I pedaled home wondering how they felt. This morning I woke up with noise of heavy rain on the tile roof and later followed some leads. I found that an NGO here, World Education, has a tiny school for the blind in our Refugee Camp.

So now we will wait to see if he will be accepted. The rain has eased and there are spots of sunlight now.