Celebrating our trachoma health workers

An important part of his job is reassuring patients that eye surgeries are safe. “People are afraid,” he says. “People in this area do not consider that it is possible to have surgery in the eye.”

In places where accurate health information is scarce, rumours sometimes circulate that trachoma surgeries involve taking out the eyeball or causing permanent blindness. But the reality is that a straightforward surgery lasting less than 20 minutes can relieve patients of the pain and discomfort of trachoma, and in some cases restore eyesight. Across his career, Dr Guera has saved the sight of between 1,500 and 2,000 people.

Dr Alfa Bio Amadou is another of Benin’s few eye surgeons. “The result is fantastic,” he says about the eye surgeries he performs. “Especially when you give sight to someone in a remote community area where there is no eye heath facility.”

Dr Amadou works in Nikki, a region of Benin where trachomatous trichiasis, the later-stage and more severe form of trachoma, is endemic. Those suffering at this stage of the disease are often forced to give up their livelihoods and social lives to manage the pain and many become reliant on family members for daily support.

The distance poses problems when it comes to aftercare. Three follow-up appointments are needed for each patient that undergoes surgery, but for those living miles from the nearest health centre, or members of nomadic communities who move around, tracking down patients is challenging.

This is where people like Zakari Abdou Loufaye come in. Zakari is a trachomatous trichiasis tracker in Benin. His work involves carefully inputting information about the patients into an app, called the TT Tracker, which stores the data and alerts doctors when follow-up appointments are due. It also means a patient’s records can be accessed by other medical teams if the patient has relocated since surgery.

The tracker app, developed by Sightsavers, has digitised and modernised the way local health centres record and store medical information about patients. Shifting to this system has made it more reliable than the previous paper-based system and the app is now an essential tool in our fight against trachoma.

Ayioundjona Oussou, the hospital director, is there to oversee everything on surgery days. He’s responsible for bringing people in and out of surgery and assisting the surgeons as they operate. When Sightsavers conducted its first wave of trachoma surgeries in Benin, it was the first time Ayioundjona had witnessed treatments taking place for this debilitating disease at his hospital. “I found it very interesting,” he says. “I went to Sightsavers’ training sessions, so learnt the theory, and now I see it put into practice.”

When more normal healthcare activities resume, he’s excited to welcome more trachoma patients to the hospital for these life-changing surgeries.