Chinese doctor helps Cameroonian boy regain eyesight

"The corrected visual acuity of your son has reached 0.5 and his intraocular pressure is in a normal state," said Xie Rui, an eye doctor with a Chinese medical team, to a Cameroonian couple after he conducted a medical checkup for their son in a hospital in Mbalmayo.

About 40 days ago, the right eye of the Cameroonian boy, who is six years old, was hit by a flying stone in an accident. He failed to receive medical treatment right away because his parents didn't fully realize how bad his injury was.

Xie Rui, an eye doctor with the Chinese medical team in Cameroon, conducts a medical checkup for a boy, who suffered an injury to his right eye in an accident. 

They didn't bring him to see a doctor until he felt pain in the eye and there was an obvious decrease in his eyesight.

A preliminary medical examination showed that there was a traumatic cataract in his right eye. In addition, the injured eye was also found to have a partial dislocation of the lens, secondary glaucoma, post-traumatic dilated pupil and angle recession.

The Cameroonian couple said that they cannot afford prospective medical expenditures for their son when Xie talked with them about their son's condition.

After learning that the boy was so young, Xie decided to pay all of the medical bills for them for a surgery scheduled for the next day.

It took about two hours for Xie and his colleagues to complete the surgery.

The boy is the first patient who has ever received a surgery for a complicated eye injury at a local hospital. His corrected vision has reached 0.5 after a month of rehabilitation.

Statistics show that about one percent of Cameroon's population has lost their eyesight and nearly half of them live with a cataract.

A group photo of Chinese doctors in Cameroon who have provided medical treatment to about 4,000 local people since their arrival in the African nation one year ago.

The China-Africa Brightness Action medical team once performed around 600 surgeries for cataract patients in 20 days. Many people wait in long lines for their turn to get medical treatment from Chinese medical experts.

Chinese eye doctors have provided about 4,000 Cameroonian people with medical treatment and performed around 90 surgeries for patients since they came a year ago.