Sisters vision saved from the silent killer of sight – glaucoma

In today’s world, we come across 40 million children who suffer from abuse every year. Children often take their parents as Gods, especially girls think their fathers as kings who stand strong like a pillar in all difficult times. This is not the same thing when we came across these two young sisters Syamala and Kavya from Visakhapatnam. They are scared to about their father even in their dreams.

Shyamala and Kavya are daughters of Mr. Samba and Mrs. Meena. Mr Samba worked at a flower shop and mother worked as a household maid. They come from Kobbarithota a small slum in Visakhapatnam.

The torture from Mrs. Meera’s drunken husband, beating the kids and her, created fear in them. This made her take the decision of sending her kids near her parents who live in a town named Palasa in Srikakulam district, who are working as daily laborers in a cashew factory.

Both sisters grew up without experiencing the love of their parents. Along with this, they were not performing well in their academics and other activities at school. The teacher identified the reason for their poor academic scores as due to vision problems in their eyes and informed the same to their grandparents.

Being aged they were at first tensed but when they heard about an eye camp organized by Sankar Foundation at Sompeta, a nearby village. They rushed both the girls to the free eye camp where they were examined and were referred to visit the hospital for further tests by the medical team. Working in a cashew factory their earnings were less but they pooled in some money from the neighbours and visited the hospital. The girls underwent various tests and were diagnosed with glaucoma in both their eyes. Glaucoma is a silent sight killer that arises out of high intraocular pressure in general. Both the girls were kept under medication for one month to control the high pressures in their eyes. The pressure did not reduce even after the medicines. Trabeculectomy surgery was planned. The surgery method was explained to the grandmother and with her consent, the surgery was performed in the right eye for the two young girls under general anaesthesia by our glaucoma specialist to reduce the mounting pressures and to protect the existing vision. The operation was free under Government YSR Aarogyasri scheme that gave a relief to the grandmother. After the successful surgery, the pressure for the older girl reduced from 40 mmHg to 10 mmHg and for the younger one it reduced from 36 mmHg to 10 mmHg. We hope to give these two young girls the best support in the future in restoring their vision.