Free eye clinic gives newcomers the priceless gift of better sight
Exams offer refugees a chance to get treatment for vision issues that were never addressed
When fleeing for their lives from war-torn Syria, the last thing the Dallal family worried about was getting their eyes checked.
Mohamad Dallal started wearing glasses at 5 for strabismus, or crossed eyes, and should have had surgery years ago to correct the problem. But in his family’s four years as refugees in Jordan, the best the now 12-year-old boy’s parents could do before being resettled in Canada in February was to take him to costly eye exams and get him some glasses.
When they learned about a free eye clinic near their new home in Brampton, they wasted no time registering Mohamad and everyone else in the family — including his two sisters and two brothers.
The family of seven, originally from Damascus, was among some 250 Syrian newcomers bused to the clinic at the Prism Eye Institute on Hurontario St., near Hwy. 407, filling all its 12 medical interview and eye exam rooms on a recent Sunday.
“We are very happy because we get the care that we didn’t have,” said Mohamad’s big sister, Nada, 16, after optometrist Stacey Chong examined her brother’s eyes.
“Mohamad has strabismus. His vision is not bad, but his left eye is weaker. We need to follow up with a plan at Sick Kids’ Hospital to straighten his eye,” explained Chong, adding that surgery would be recommended.
The free clinic — the brainchild of University of Toronto medical student Tarek Bin Yameen — is a joint effort of Mes Amis, a volunteer group that helps Syrian newcomers settle, St. Michael’s Hospital and dozens of ophthalmologists, optometrists, opticians and medical students from all over Greater Toronto.
On this Sunday, some 80 volunteers, including 45 Arabic speakers serving as translators, ran the clinic out of the Prism Eye Institute, which not only provided the equipment and venue but also staff for administrative support.
Dr. Ike Ahmed, medical director of the institute and head of eye surgery at the Trillium Health Centre, said more than half of the Syrians registered for the clinic were children, a number of whom were diagnosed with lazy eyes and cataracts. “What we are most concerned about are the kids. If their visual problems are not picked up, it could be too late to treat them and the problems become permanent,” said Ahmed, who jumped on the opportunity to host the clinic when approached by Bin Yameen through Uof T professor Myrna Lichter.
Bin Yameen said he came up with the idea after he learned of an eye condition suffered by a Syrian child from a family he helped resettle in Sudbury earlier this year.
“I grew up in Yemen during the civil war in 1994 and we lived in a refugee camp. We had a cholera outbreak and 40 people perished. I survived because I had my vaccination. When I see these kids in the clinic, it is very personal to me,” said Bin Yameen, whose family came to Canada and settled in Brampton in 2001.
Bin Yameen said about 40 per cent of the children they see at the clinic require glasses and some medical intervention with their eye problems. An earlier clinic in the summer identified four people with the rare retinitis pigmentosa — an inherited, degenerative eye disease that could lead to blindness if left untreated.
Essam Aljundi, who arrived in Mississauga with his family in January via Lebanon, said it’s impossible to see a doctor when one is constantly moving from place to place for safety.
“Myself, my wife and our (six) children had not had an eye exam since we left our home in Nawa. Food was more important than eye care and anything else,” said the 46-year-old, who was a pharmacist back home. “We are grateful to Canada. We greatly appreciate all these volunteers’ support.”
Although the Syrian newcomers have their eye care covered by the federal and provincial governments, Julie Mahfouz Rezvani of Mes Amis said the language barrier has remained a huge hurdle for them to access health care.
“Unless something is totally broken, they are not going to look for help to fix it. We arrange the bus to pick them up but having Arabicspeaking translators here to help them is huge,” Rezvani noted.
“We had someone calling from Hamilton saying his son had a bad eye problem. There were 11 people in the family, but all he was asking for was to have his son seen by an eye doctor here.” Other eye clinics have been planned for the Kitchener area.