Peekaboo, we can see you now
Following donations received from this year’s Karoo to Coast Cycle Race, the Knysna Lions Club managed to fund more than 50 cataract surgeries in Knysna in one week as part of the organisation’s SightFirst project.
Lions Club International has been running the SightFirst project for the past 29 years, with more than 9-million cataract surgeries taking place all over the world since 1990. In Knysna and the Garden Route district, the Lions clubs have relied heavily on the donations they receive for the SightFirst project from events, companies, and various organisations.
The project’s impact has been monumental in every corner of the world where it’s been launched, and in the Garden Route its impact has blown no one away more than ophthalmologist Dr Klaas Stempels.
Carrying out cataract surgeries locally for the project for more than 15 years now, and in Knysna in particular since 2011, Stempels said, “I have seen a very big decrease in the number of full cataract blindness cases in Eden in the last 20 years,” and commended the Lions for their efforts. “The work that the Lions clubs have been doing is definitely making a very big impact.”
Knysna Lions Club member and SightFirst coordinator Olwen Toms has championed the project in Knysna and the Garden Route for the past 20 years, and says she is humbled by the project’s growth.
“When we first started, a quarter of people who were booked for surgeries wouldn’t pitch up because they were scared,” Toms said.
This has changed immensely however, as more than 5 100 cataract surgeries, cornea grafts, retinal detachment surgeries, squint operations, and a host of other eye surgeries have been carried out in Knysna alone.
This year, the latest donations received by the club enabled the funding of 56 cataract surgeries, all of which took place at Knysna Provincial Hospital at the hands of Dr Stempels and his team. The work doesn’t stop there however, as the organisation has had 12 rural doctors trained, surgical supplies donated, and 90 more cataract ops paid for, with another 10 operations budgeted last year. Another 10 doctors will be trained this coming year, all operating in rural areas in South Africa of which five will do cataract surgeries and five will do glaucoma surgeries.