Malawi Council for the Handicapped (MACOHA) has a team of field workers in their community based rehabilitation programme.  They have spent weeks and months travelling through the Salima District villages screening people, and then bringing them to Nkhoma Eye Hospital throughout this fortnight.

Over a hundred cataract operations have been performed, and after a day or two for each patient in the hospital, a lot of people have left happy.

A satisfied crowd from Salima, waiting for the car home

MACOHA refer around 30% of all of our patients to us.

We will be heading back into the villages around Salima in a month or so to follow-up a few dozen people.  Usually it’s too far and expensive for people to travel back to the hospital for a check up after surgery, so we are going to travel to them.

It is very cold and windy at Nkhoma right now.  As most of the people in the villages don’t have electricity, there is only open fires to keep warm.  Sadly that also means a lot of burn injuries, and we recently had a 15 year old girl who had an epileptic seizure, and fell into a fire face first.  It was a while before anyone could help her, and unfortunately too late for the third degree burns she sustained over her eyelids, face and neck.

Dr John Sandford-Smith was visiting and luckily could successfully help her with her eyelids.  We are sending an ambulance into her village near Kasina to bring her to hospital for review today.  I hope we can find her.

We have done our first few cataract operations.  I also saw a 12 year old boy who had a penetrating  pen injury to his eye.  Managed to sort it out in theatre.

Steve and Kambewa are driving 200 miles to Mangotchi and Machinga, near the lakeshore, tomorrow to meet the district health officer for his permission to work for patients in his area.  It’s actually a very under-served area of Malawi, so a perfect place to start our outreach activities this year.

We have had fantastic rains here in Nkhoma, interspersed with beautiful warm sunshine, so the maize crops in the villages are doing really well.  In fact the rains and storms were so good here at Nkhoma, I had lightning strike my house twice last Friday.

So here we are.  All safe and well; scorpions, spiders, malaria, tame snakes and lizards, and my trusty dogs Ellie and Malu; ready to tackle the house; and with the amazing staff at Nkhoma, the year ahead.

We are all missing Nick.  And we continue to pray daily for him and his family.  The work that he built up here absolutely must continue.

Sadly the gentleman, Mr Efuloni, who came to Nkhoma from Salima last year, having been referred by the Malawi Council for the Handicapped (MACOHA) has died.  He was a wonderful man, a village chief.  The cataract surgery on his first eye was the 25,000th cataract operation at Nkhoma since 2000.  I remember his smile very well after we operated his second eye!

before the cataract operation

Mr Efuloni after surgeries

He had spent the last few months with his family in his Salima village.  But, as a small blessing to his family and Mr Efuloni, he could see his family, his children and grandchildren; and his wife.

Let’s get this year started, trying to help more people like Mr Efuloni who have been robbed of their sight.