In a remarkable feat at Sewa Sadan Eye Hospital, Bhopal Piraki Bai – 106-year-old resident of village Jamunia Johar, Madhya Pradesh underwent a successful cataract surgery on 6 December, 2024.
Dr Sapna Srivastava, Glaucoma and Cataract Consultant at SSEH performed the surgery.
Fear of surgery is still a barrier for a large number of people, sometimes resulting in loss of vision. When Piraki Bai’s vision in both eyes started deteriorating, she was advised surgery. However, due to fear of surgery, she refused the sight saving treatment. This cost her heavily. She lost vision in one eye. The fate of the other eye could also have been the same, as Piraki Bai was reluctant for treatment. However, it was family members persuasion and counseling by doctors that made Piraki Bai agree to the surgery. Maybe the fact that all her family members had their cataract surgery at SSEH gave Piraki Bai confidence.
The centenarian was accompanied by her 67-year old nephew, Shivcharan Chaudhary to the hospital in Bairagarh. Once the bandage was removed after the surgery, the great grandmother’s joy knew no bounds. After all it was worth it all.
Nisha Solanki belongs to a large family of two brothers and four sisters (of whom 3 are married). Both her brothers and elder sister attend school. Nisha’s father is mentally challenged. The responsibility of earning is on the mother, who is a daily wage farm labourer and grandmother, who tends to her goats. Two earing members for a family of ten.
Blindness in children leads to deep impact on psychological, emotional, and socioeconomic growth to the family. A child with blindness is more likely to have delays in developmental milestones, to be more frequently hospitalized, and die during childhood than a sighted child. Such severe vision loss also adversely effects the educational activities, orientation, and mobility from the early stage of life resulting in lack of employment privilege. These differential characteristics between a sighted and non-sighted child is more obvious in developing countries. Moreover, the disability adjusted life years (DALY) loss in a blind child is far more than that of adults with blindness.