Seeing to Believe
Story by Otlotleng Mokgatle
We see many inequalities in our day to day lives as South Africans, many of which are economically, medically and geographically linked.
One such issue which Flying for Life endeavours to address is access to healthcare for the country’s most vulnerable and geographically dissociated individuals, whose quality of life is consistently undermined due to the aforementioned inequalities.
Building hope and healing through our dental and eye care programmes, Flying for Life sets off for Vhembe, Limpopo on Saturday 8 May 2021 with a group of top-class ophthalmologists to address the prevalence of treatable vision issues in the municipality. We, at Flying for Life endeavour to bring this issue to book and play our part in assisting the hundreds of patients awaiting cataract surgery. Through changing others’ lives, we change our own.
With some individuals in Venda being on the waiting list for as long as three years, 290,000 South Africans are at risk of going blind due to cataracts, with government unable to meet the demand for these sight-saving surgeries, putting prospective patients at risk of vision loss and/or blindness. Cataracts account for approximately half of the causes for blindness on the African continent.
This is where Flying for Life steps in…
Playing our part to address this issue by flying volunteer ophthalmologists and nurses to perform cataract surgeries, assess patients and prescribe further assistance if needs be.
We partner with MercyAir to bring flights to the isolated.
We have so far impacted many lives in the region and are so enthused to be able to carry you all with us on this journey in helping our most vulnerable communities see and believe.
To further assist our mission, DONATE to Flying for Life!