Poland’s Redemptoris Missio said the trip is its ninth such expedition. Volunteers are traveling on their own vacation time and will carry all instruments and medicines—17 crates in total—needed for the operations, foundation head Justyna Janiec-Palczewska said.
“We want to help the poorest, people who lost their sight and never dreamed they would see their grandchildren and loved ones again,” she said.
The team initially planned to go to Madagascar, but the foundation rerouted the mission to avoid wasting purchased supplies and the specialists’ reserved time after what it described as a recent coup and tense conditions there.
Doctors will focus on cataract cases, most common among older adults, though younger patients have also been treated on prior trips. In much of Africa, older people lack pensions and rely on family support and their own labor; when vision fails, many cannot work and rarely leave their homes.
On past visits, Polish doctors have seen patients with a range of eye diseases and ages, for many the only chance to be evaluated by a specialist. Janiec-Palczewska said people in the Central African Republic often seek help from shamans, leading to harmful practices.
She recalled children blinded after shamans cut their corneas “to drive out evil,” and patients scarred by caustic bark infusions poured into the eye. She also saw children blind from glaucoma that might have been controlled with medicines their parents could not afford. In the country of roughly five million, she said, only a handful of ophthalmologists practice and visits are costly.
Foundation volunteers have previously worked in Cameroon, Tanzania and Angola, as well as on earlier missions to the Central African Republic. Janiec-Palczewska said parishioners from the Kalisz diocese and Poznań helped fund the trip through church collections.
(jh)
Source: PAP