Mercy Vision

Photo Credit: Mercy Ships, Photo of the Day 2009-04-24

Mother with her three blind children: son Alexis 7 yrs, daughter Adej 3 yr and yr old son Ricardo, will receive eye surgery by Dr Strauss on the AFM. Picture taken before Surgery.

Between February and December 2009, the Mercy Vision Team will return sight to 3,000 Beninese people suffering from blindness. On the ship, ophthalmologists perform free surgeries to remove cataracts and provide other specialized eye procedures.

Off the ship, Mercy Ships runs four remote eye clinics, in a different area each day, primarily to find candidates for surgery. The eye team also educates the patients in basic eye health.

Over these 10 months, the eye team will see approximately 200 people each day. They will evaluate and treat 20,000 patients for basic eye disease, as well as distributing 5,000 pairs of sunglasses and 5,000 pairs of reading glasses.

To ensure that people are healed more widely and for years to come, Dr. Glenn Strauss of the USA will train surgeons, both local and from abroad, in the specialized cataract procedure he has developed during years of working in West Africa.