Kaduna hospital battling to save Nigerian eyes

Chizarom Azodoh is a 16-year-old boy from Owerri, Imo State who was born with cataract. Since his birth, majority of his life has been spent chasing a cure for his blindness. At just eight weeks old, that journey led him to a hospital in the ancient city of Kano, where after observing him, the doctors […]

Chizarom Azodoh is a 16-year-old boy from Owerri, Imo State who was born with cataract. Since his birth, majority of his life has been spent chasing a cure for his blindness.

At just eight weeks old, that journey led him to a hospital in the ancient city of Kano, where after observing him, the doctors said he had missed the window for the surgery, which needed to have been performed at three weeks, his elder brother, Chibueze Azodoh narrated.

Eventually, by the time he was 12 weeks old, his parents took him back to the hospital in Kano and this time, he had the surgery and the cataract was removed.

“When he came back, he was alright. He was using sun glasses then,” his brother, Chibueze, recounted. “One day, a fellow student thought the glasses were just for fashion, they tussled over the glasses and the eye was affected.”

“Chizarom continued bleeding and shedding tears after the incident so our parents took him back to Kano where we were told that the lens had shifted and had to be removed,” he said.

But sadly, even after the lens were removed, Chizarom’s eyes continued to turn white and deteriorate by the day. The situation was not helped by the fact that the doctor that had performed the initial surgery had returned to his native India and there was no one competent enough to perform the treatment.

It was devastating news for the family who thought their son would remain blind for the rest of his life. But they kept searching, hopeful for help for their child.

“We continued searching for a hospital where the correction could be effected when my younger brother’s friend said there is a hospital he knows in Kaduna.

“By the time we got to Thelish Eye Centre in Kaduna, we thought the eye is beyond redemption because it had become so white.

“Luckily, after conducting a test on the retina, they confirmed that the retina is good and he could have a cornea transplant. The doctor wanted to operate the two eyes, but my father said we should operate on the eye that is worse before the other.”

After the surgery, Chizarom can now see and his family is elated.

There are many cases like his.

Salami Pa Patrick, 60, had his eye damaged by a quack doctor in Kaduna.

“I just discovered that I could not see properly, so I told my son who said he knows one doctor and that we should go there.

“I asked my son how effective is the doctor? We eventually went there; the man said he can operate on my eyes. I did not see the instruments he used; he just started punching my eyes. The man turned out to be a traditional doctor,” he said, recounting how he lost his sight completely.

“I thank God that I was able to come to this hospital on time because I have regained my sight fully now and I want to thank the doctors for conducting the surgery which could have cost me N650,000 free as I could not afford to pay for the surgery,” he said.

Cataract is a clouding of the lens in the eye which leads to a decrease in vision. Cataracts often develop slowly and can affect one or both eyes. Symptoms may include faded colors, blurry vision, halos around light, trouble with bright lights, and trouble seeing at night. This may result in trouble driving, reading, or recognizing things or people. Cataracts cause half of all cases of blindness and 33% of visual impairment worldwide.

Treatment for the ailment has often required patients be taken abroad. That is what Thelish Eye Centre, Kaduna, jointly managed by Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Institute, an Indian-Based hospital, is trying to change.

The Director of the center, Dr. Ime Etuk, said in the six years since their establishment, the centre has provided opportunities for Nigerians to stay in country and receive medical treatment for which they would have travelled abroad in the past.

In its ranks, the hospital boasts of having the youngest surgeon to have carried out corneal transplant in the whole of Africa. At 27, Dr. Smith M. Bavariya successfully conducted the transplant on a nine-month-old baby.

Bavariya said the baby’s surgery, was a major breakthrough and the first in Nigeria and in Africa adding, “The baby was brought by the parents from Port Harcourt, Rivers State, having suffered from measles which later developed into corneal opacity.”

His reasons for coming to Nigeria at such a young age are simple.

“I am the only surgeon who has been doing the transplant throughout Africa, especially that small baby and before now, patients were sent to India for the transplant,” Bavariya said.

Explaining what the corneal transplant is, he said, “The cornea is the protective outer layer of the eye. If it is damaged by disease, infection or an injury, the resulting scars can affect vision. Corneal disease refers to many conditions that affect this part of the eye,” he said.

“Many people were coming to India for different types of eye surgeries and that informed the decision by Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Institute to establish the center jointly with Thelish Eye Centre in Kaduna so as to reduce medical tourism.

“Otherwise if these people are to go to India, the air travel, the accommodation, visa and so on, would have cost them a fortune,” he said.

The transplant is becoming quite a regular fit for him as the centre conducts between six and seven operations every month.

“We had developed a technique called Glued IoL which is used where we cannot fix the lens in a patient in normal circumstances, especially cases like injuries, some defects or lack of proper support of the lens,” he said.

But like the doctors, the cornea  required for the transplant are also imported, from Chicago, and these helps in making the surgery quite expensive. But the doctors said the technology of the surgery is pretty standard whether in India, the US or Nigeria.

Cases of cornea transplant are fairly common in Nigeria as a result of infections or injuries.

“In some cases, blasts and sharp metals that enter the eye, mess it up and the lens cannot be put properly. In such cases, we fix the lens with specialized glue- the human glue made of human blood,” he said.

For the young doctor, there is a lot to be done in Nigeria. For the patients who need the help available at the centre, they might just be able to glimpse the light at the end of the long, dark tunnel. And it is closer to home than they imagined.