On his 10th birthday, Meli received sight-saving cataract surgery.
When Meli, a ten-year-old boy from Fiji, first started school, it became clear he was struggling with his vision.
His teacher noticed he had trouble reading the blackboard and held books unusually close to his face. At home, his mother saw how bright sunlight made things even harder.
“He’s always doing this,” said Meli’s mum, Nanemai, shaping her hand into a tunnel to show how he blocked the sun from his eyes. “The bright light, he can’t look.” Meli wanted to play sports and games with his friends, but his mother was worried because of his sight and didn’t allow him. “I really wanted him to see properly like other kids.”
When Project HEAVEN, a local non-profit that works with schools and health services across Fiji to improve children’s eye and ear health, visited Meli’s school for a screening, they gave him a pair of glasses to help. But a year later, Meli said the glasses no longer worked. His family took him to the Pacific Eye Institute (PEI), where he was diagnosed with a cataract in his left eye, likely something he was born with. His right eye was also affected, though not as severely.
It wasn’t the first time the family had faced this challenge. Years earlier, Meli’s older sister had also experienced vision loss from cataracts. She had successful surgery at PEI, so when Meli’s eyesight began to deteriorate, his family knew what to do and where to go.
“Maybe that’s the present for you!” Nanemai told him with a smile.
Meli was a little nervous, but hopeful. When he woke from surgery, he was eager to remove the bandage. The next morning, when the nurse asked him to read the eye chart, he could finally see the letters that had once been a blur.
“Before surgery, he was trying, eh?” said his sister. “He was trying [to read] but he couldn’t see. But when the nurse came to wipe out that thing [bandage] and told him to read the alphabet, he just read it out! Oh, I was really happy! I was really excited! I really thank the doctors for that.”
At home, even small things have changed. “Before the surgery, even small things like this, he can’t see,” his sister said, pointing to a phone just a metre away. “Now he can see!”
Now, with improved sight, Meli can live more like other children his age. And his family is deeply grateful.
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