Janice Yeoman and Germaine Joblin have families and practices in New Zealand, but earlier this year planned a trip to Tonga, armed with glasses and equipment to make prosthetic eyes. Photo: Christina Persico/RNZ
A non-verbal, severely myopic Tongan child, moved to say 'wow' when looking through glasses, was one of more than 200 people seen by two Auckland women giving voluntary eye care.
Janice Yeoman and Germaine Joblin have families and practices in New Zealand, but earlier this year planned a trip to the Pacific kingdom, armed with prescription glasses and equipment to make prosthetic eyes.
Joblin worked with her Auckland-based Tongan colleague, Telusila Vea, a community eyecare coordinator, to organise the outreach clinic and raise awareness of the services among the local community.
Yeoman said the response in Tonga was "overwhelmingly positive".
"There were a lot of happy tears," she said.
"I think they were just very grateful that we were there and that we had the time to see them and to provide custom care to them.
"It wasn't just a screening service - each person got a custom prescription and custom glasses and a full health check."
They saw 210 patients in four and a half days. The work included a visit to Red Cross Tonga to check the eyes of children with disabilities.
The cases they encountered were varied and included uncorrected refractive error for which they prescribed 172 pairs of glasses. There were cases of cataracts, diabetic retinopathy, keratoconus, glaucoma and pterygia.
Photo: Supplied
In her Takapuna, Auckland, clinic, Yeoman makes about 10 prosthetic eyes in a month. In Tonga, she fitted nine in four and a half days.
"Prosthetic services just don't exist at all. There are plenty of people who were walking around with no eye and physical disfigurement, and this was really quite life-changing."
She said they were met with welcome and gratitude. One mother told her: Oh my goodness, now he can go back to school and feel normal.
"I think it goes so much further than the individual. It's about the families; it's about the communities.
"It really makes a big difference in terms of how people interact with their environments, and how they learn, and all these sorts of things."
Joblin recalled one boy, about 12 or 13 years old, who was non-verbal.
He had no glasses on, and when she checked his eyes he needed a very high prescription - 10 diopters.
"If you're myopic (short-sighted) or familiar with myopia, you'll know this means he was effectively living in a world of clinical blindness," she said.
"And when I put those lenses in front of him, he said 'wow'.
"He could finally see our faces - mine and his friends.
"I still [get] tingles down my spine when I think of that."
Joblin said the trip gave her a great sense of purpose.
"If you ask people, what is the most precious sense? I think studies have suggested at least 90 per cent of people suggest their eyesight.
"And so to be able to give that to them in a very immediate [way] - like 'here are your glasses' - in a tangible way, it's extremely satisfying. And then to see the reactions."
The pair also met Hu'akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni who was then the Prime Minister, who sent the Minister of Health and his team to meet them at the hospital to discuss the eye care situation in Tonga.
And they want their project - Eyes for Good - to be more than a one-time thing. They worked with local nurses offering some training, and they say they'd love to volunteer there again, possibly in a different part of the country.
"I think it's really meaningful to go back to the same place where you've really established some connection," Yeoman said.
"The last thing we want to do is just do something that doesn't have any traction and momentum."