Malo's Miracle in Vietnam

A special report from Brian Doolan, CEO.

I must tell you about Malo.

“My eyes: If I go out in the sun, my eyes hurt”, he told us.

The team from The Fred Hollows Foundation exchanged hopeful glances. The fact that his eyes hurt in the sunlight was actually a good sign.

By any measure, the young boy from south central Vietnam is blind.

But by holding his head close to a page and squinting, Malo can make out images. He is a clever little boy, and he has even learnt to write.

Because he gets an excruciating explosion of pain when out in the sun it means his retinas are not completely ‘dead’.

There is a possibility, just a small one, that with the careful removal of his cataracts and the insertion of intraocular lenses (IOLs), Malo might just be able to see normally.

There are 40 million blind people living in the developing world. Through blindness, they miss out on education, on families, on supporting themselves. They are totally dependent on others. They die early, often within five years of going blind.

The greatest tragedy is that blindness can be treated or prevented in 3 out of 4 of these people.

A gift of as little as $25 can help restore the sight of a person blinded by cataract.

They could be people with their whole lives ahead of them - people like Malo.

Malo is a child of the Ba’na people, one of the 53 ethnic minority peoples in Vietnam.

His father “went away” soon after his birth. His mother struggles to raise her little boy by herself, working as a farm labourer, spending most of her days outdoors.

Malo didn’t get to see much of his mother because of the excruciating pain he experienced when he was in direct sunlight.

The thought that Malo and his mother were being kept apart simply because she didn’t have enough money to pay for a relatively inexpensive procedure is heartbreaking.

It’s obvious from the way she looks at Malo that he is everything to her. For all his troubles, he is a lucky boy to be loved so much.

The day I met Malo he was sitting on a tiny plastic stool in a traditional farm hut in the central southern province of Phu Yen in Vietnam.

The team from The Fred Hollows Foundation helped Malo and his mum into the four wheel drive to begin the long, bumpy ride to town. The next day would tell whether Malo might ever get to play in the sunshine with other children, get an education and spend more time with his mother.

This is the moment I dread.

What if the surgical procedure doesn’t work? Have we raised their hopes, only to have them dashed?

Malo’s surgeon, Dr Tran Minh Phuong, received specialist paediatric cataract surgical training funded by The Fred Hollows Foundation.

This training is what makes it possible for her to perform the simple, miraculous surgery she is about to do on Malo, delicately removing his own lenses and carefully inserting the tiny plastic intraocular lenses Fred Hollows worked so hard to bring to the developing world.

Every time I see this operation I am totally blown away. At one level it is so skilful, and at another, so simple.

Thanks to the support of Australians like you, 50% of Vietnamese ophthalmologists have received some form of training either from Fred Hollows himself or through the work of The Foundation.

That’s a pretty amazing achievement. 

When Fred Hollows introduced modern surgical training in Vietnam, just before he died in 1993, only 100 IOL cataract operations were done each year.

Now, thanks to the support of people like you, it is around 120,000.

And this year, Malo was one of them.

Would you please make a generous gift now, to help others like Malo see again?

Twenty four hours after Malo’s operation, the moment of truth arrived. As the patches came off his eyes, we all held our breath.

His smile lit up the room. It was like he was re-born.

Throughout the day, he played with other children and pointed out the details of small trucks that he’d never been able to see before.

Then the most amazing thing happened, the little boy who just two days before had stumbled and bumped into walls started ... running!

He flew down the hall with the carelessness of a child, his face filled with joy. I wish you could have seen it.

All the work and commitment to train doctors like Tran Minh Phuong, to train the nurses, to screen and treat the patients – all of it was repaid a million times over in that moment.

Last year, thanks to donations from you and others like you, The Foundation worked in 18 developing countries and screened more than 1.2 million people, and carried out 143,759 eye operations, up from 73,838 in 2006.

In one year, thanks to supports like you, we almost doubled our achievements.

Now we want to again double the number of people we screen and treat. We’re starting from a higher base, which makes it a huge goal, but I think it is a fitting tribute to Fred Hollows.

Will you help? Will you make a gift now to restore the sight of twice as many people?

A gift of as little as $25 can help restore sight to someone blinded by cataract. A gift of $80 will help buy 10 intraocular lenses. $250 can fund cataract surgery for up to 10 people. $500 can restore the sight of as many as 20 people.

Most of all, a gift from you can give a blind person a future.

Now, whenever I venture out in bright sunlight, I think of Malo, and the difference his operation has made to him and his mother.

Please, turn and look outside toward the light. Malo can do that now too, without pain.

Supporters like you gave him that gift. Can I count on you now to give it to others?

View photo slideshow to see more inspiring images of Malo and The Foundation's work in Vietnam, taken by Walkley Awards finalist, photographer Brendan Esposito.