Bliss Eye Care To The Rescue Of Little Faustina

Eight-year-old Faustina Gaamuo, a class two pupil of St Paul's Primary in the Nandom District of the Upper West Region was full of joy after Bliss Eye Care presented her with a set of glasses that aided a vision to write well on a plain sheet.

Failure to write terminal exams and doing class exercises had become common with little Faustina due to her visual challenge; a situation that caused confusing between the father, Mr. Vitalis Gaamuo and St. Paul's Primary School authorities over payment of exam fee.

Narrating little Faustina's plight to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Wa, Mr. Gaamuo said he detected his child's visual challenge when she was six months old, saying he took her to the hospital at Sefwi in the Western Region where they were settled but was only given an eye drop to be applying to her eyes.

He said that action showed no results until Faustina turned two years which got him worried, hence, his decision to seek spiritual help, the beginning of his visits to prayer camps.

Mr Gamuo said at one of the prayer camps, he was told the child was a spirit child that had come to disturb him and go; a situation that compounded his worries even though he did not allow that to affect his love for the child.

He said the child became of age but could not walk until he sent her to the Agogo Hospital where an operation was performed on her eyes after several visits in 2010, noting that one week after the operation was performed the child started walking despite the visual challenge.

He said after that he relocated to Nandom, his hometown where he enrolled Faustina at the St. Paul's Primary as a result of his determination to still give her the best of education he could despite the challenge.

With the hope of finding a solution to his daughter's plight, Mr Gaamuo again decided to send her to the Nandom St. Theresa's Hospital where she was diagnosed with an eye condition known as congenital cataracts extraction nystagmus.

He said St. Theresa's Hospital then referred her to the Bliss Eye Care Centre in Wa, adding he was amazed to see Faustina writing so well on the sheet of paper with the help of the spectacles.

'I was even more amazed when the doctor told me it is free and that I will not be paying anything. While he was attending to the child, my heart was beating because I don't know how much he will be charging from me', he said.

He expressed gratitude to Bliss Eye Care and appealed for support for the eye clinic for it to continue to render such good services to people who were in need like his daughter.

Dr Zakarea Alhassan Balure, an Optometrist and Manager of Bliss Eye Care said the gesture was part of a free eye screening and treatment exercise for all school pupils in the Upper West Region under the project 'Blissful Sight for Kids' which was being sponsored by Roland Studer and his organization PRO VISUS.

GNA
By Prosper K. Kuorsoh, GNA