See Again International

Naing Htoo Aung’s Story: When Naing was eight, his parents were killed in a mine accident, so his sixty-five-year-old grandmother adopted him. A burns injury scarred Naing’s left eyelid open, exposing his eye to severe damage. His grandmother pawned her only possession, her village house, for US$30.00 to bring Naing downriver from Kachin State to Wachet Jivatadana Sangha hospital for treatment.

The See Again Myanmar Eye Care Project team came to know Naing and his loving grandmother well, and Naing soon became the staff’s pet patient.
After his recovery from four surgical procedures, the team arranged Naing’s attendance at a fee-free monastery school in Mandalay Hills. He continued his education, and his grandmother found work and a home nearby.

A one-hundred-and-seven-Year-Old Monk’s Story: A monk aged one-hundred-and-seven had spanned three centuries of momentous times from 1899. He has retained all of his wisdom if none of his teeth. On one Christmas Day, the See Again Myanmar Eye Care Project team replaced a cataract which had recently clouded his world view with an intra-ocular lens and restored his ability to read. During his stay and out of respect for the monk’s great age and status, the medical superintendent surrendered her office to him for a week giving him a private room. The monk spent the recovery time meditating. May he live long to see many more miracles.

A success story in Bali: Seeing is Believing. Gaining the first glimpse of her infant son: In the ‘Island of the Gods,’ a young village woman had thus far fed her baby and changed him by touch. Her white, cataract-clouded pupils were stark in her expressionless face. Her husband had the haunted look of a man whose responsibilities were drowning him. Dr Cohn spared only a minute to decide that surgery was worthwhile.

The day after the surgery, the auxiliaries removed the eye pad and asked her to look at the eye chart. She did not do so. She silently searched the room for a familiar squawk. That was her only recognition of her infant. She swept across the room to see him for the first time.

Fortunately, tears are good for the eye which has undergone cataract surgery. However, tears did make it difficult for Dr Cohn to see down the laser microscope where he was pretending that the scene did not move him.

A success story in Cambodia

Geoff Cohn and Ek Sarou, founder and CEO of Battambang Ophthalmic Care, were screening for eye disease in a Cham village, Southern Cambodia, when infant Rosica, aged five months, was brought in. The mother had recognised that her daughter could not see anything. The child was diagnosed with congenital glaucoma at its last possible stage of reversal!

Urgent surgical intervention at BOC changed everything! Rosica is now seven years old and living a normal life, occasionally monitored by the BOC team.

In every country where See Again International operates, local eye surgeons are upskilled, mastering brief surgical procedures including laser treatment to prevent glaucoma and alleviate cataract blindness by replacing clouded lenses with clear acrylic intra-ocular-lenses! Additionally, the program teaches ophthalmologists subspeciality skills such as retinal, paediatric, and oculoplastic surgery.

And miracles happen – the day after the removal of a cataract, a blind person sees again. Thus, life by life is enabled forever by the attention of a medical team who cares.

By the end of each visit, the surgical team is exhausted and quietly exhilarated, knowing that they have made a life-enhancing difference to so many people.

The program trains the auxiliaries, who can soon screen, prescribe glasses, teach eye health and educate regarding glaucoma and other conditions. They list people for surgery, take a history, examine vision and refract, test eye pressures, and present the patient to the surgeon, who consequently needs very little time to draw a treatment conclusion. The auxiliaries then apply the instructions, counsel each patient, perform biometry, prepare the eye for surgery by sterilisation, and take responsibility for postoperative care.

See Again International offers a heartfelt thanks to all our generous donors who openhandedly support the project’s ongoing aspirations.

The project is funded entirely by donation. Volunteers from Australia pay their own travel and living expenses and use 100% of donated money for sight-restoration.

Restoring eyesight in underprivileged countries is cheap to first-world donors, so numerous compassionate Australians and others internationally give generously. You too can participate in this very worthwhile cause! Every donation is most welcome and goes directly to save eyes.

100% of your donation restores sight because medical, nursing and other volunteers pay their own travel and living expenses.

Please donate to See Again International via Vision Beyond Aus

The numbers are significant over almost four decades and continue to increase. More important to the team, though, is the number of sight-restoring and independence-granting procedures we have facilitated, the number of experts we have trained and supported and continue to support.

Once the team achieves capacity and standards, the project flourishes vitally of its own. We have attained success! There is something infinitely gratifying to the teams about celebrating their students’ achievements – and likewise their students’ students.