Fred Hollows Foundation doctors saved the sight of Daniel Pulu Vea, 4. Photo/Supplied
Fred Hollows Foundation doctors saved the sight of Daniel Pulu Vea, 4. Photo/Supplied
Four-year-old Daniel Pulu Vea was playing with a broom when it broke sending part of it flying into his left eye, tearing the retina.
His family rushed him to the hospital in Tonga but they sent him away. There was nothing they could do because there are no eye doctors or ophthalmologists in Tonga.
Fortunately a Tongan doctor, studying ophthalmology at the Pacific Eye Institute in Fiji thanks to a scholarship from the Fred Hollows Foundation, dropped everything to fly to Tonga and treat the boy.
"Because he was so young he needed his eye repaired as soon as possible," Dr Duke Mataka said. "The handle penetrated the cornea and hit the lens as well."
Mataka repaired the cornea but he knew there was a good chance that would not be the end of the story.
Daniel Pulu Vea, 4, almost lost sight in one eye after part of a broom hit him in the eye. Photo/Supplied
Children who suffer eye trauma often developed cataracts soon after and, sure enough, Mataka received word Daniel's eye had gone cloudy and he was staring to lose his vision.
"This was terrible for him. Every day his sight got worse, he became very scared of totally losing his sight in his left eye. His mother and father were very worried too. He couldn't do his work at school and the other kids teased him about his eye. It was a very distressing time for Daniel and his family," Mataka said.
The Fred Hollows Foundation outreach team was due to visit Tonga six months after Daniel's injury so Mataka arranged to see him on their return.
"When I saw him, I hoped for a smile, but he was such a sad boy by now."
But within half an hour the cataract had been removed and a new lens put in.
Daniel Pulu Vea, 4, almost lost sight in one eye after part of a broom hit him in the eye. Photo/Supplied
"He walked straight from the operating room to my office and climbed up on the chair and said, 'thank you'. I think, more than 10 times he said thank you."
The next day his vision was completely restored and he was back to being a cheeky little boy, laughing and playing with his brothers.
"I cannot tell you what that feels like. To see Daniel go from a scared little boy to this picture of happiness - the joy it gave me," Mataka said.
Mataka is one of the Pacific Island born doctors who has received a scholarship from the Fred Hollows Foundation to study ophthalmology with the aim of helping end avoidable blindness in the Pacific.
He was working on Vava'u, one of Tonga's outer islands, when he first came into contact with the foundation in 2013.
Daniel Pulu Vea has his eye examined by Fred Hollows Foundation doctors. Photo/Supplied
They asked if he was interested in ophthalmology, he said he was and next year he will become the first ophthalmologist in Tonga.
Mataka said blindness was a big issue in the Pacific Islands because people accepted that as they got older they would become blind or visually impaired and would have no choice but to rely on family to care for them.
"It's really a rewarding thing when those people are able to work and help out and do productive work for the family," he said. "They usually come with canes and will be helped into the operating room. When they come to have their bandages off, they walk out on their own."
In the past five years alone, the foundation performed nearly one million sight-restoring operations and treatments and trained more than 38,000 eye health workers. The New Zealand arm of the global organisation has performed close to 90,000 sight-saving operations since it began it programmes in the Pacific in 2002.
October marks the 25th anniversary of the Fred Hollows Foundation, established by legendary New Zealander the late Fred Hollows, to restore sight to the needlessly blind in developing countries.
The foundation will kick off celebrations tonight with a panel discussion with some of the organisation's Pacific doctors and an auction of 25 $5 notes signed by Sir Edmund Hillary.
The Fred Hollows Foundation • The foundation works in more than 29 developing countries across Africa, Asia and the Pacific. • The New Zealand branch has an extensive programme across the Pacific and Timor-Leste that focuses on training local doctors and nurses to provide high quality eye care in their own communities. • Fred Hollows set up factories to make IOLs (the tiny plastic lens used to replace the cataract damaged lens) to decrease the cost of making them from $200 to $5. • As a result of Fred's initiative, a 20 minute surgery to remove a cataract and give someone back their sight now costs as little as $25. • To this day, the IOL factories are owned and run by local people and the profits are used to train local eye doctors and nurses.
