wfn.org | UMCOR trying to save Haitian kids stricken with cancer of the eye

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Nov. 21, 2000 News media contact: Linda Bloom·(212) 870-3803·New York
10-71B{526}

By Cathy Farmer*

Everyone found it hard to look at Douce, even the doctors at University
Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The pretty little four-year-old was a
victim of retinoblastoma, or cancer of the eye.
Her loving grandfather, 70-year-old Ce Dien Desamous, a farmer who grows
maize and bananas near the small town of Marigox, carried her into the
hospital, hoping the doctors could save her.
One of Douce's eyes, the healthy one, was soft and brown and filled with
pain. The other, well, the other had been transformed into a massive growth
that distorted her face.
Yuri Zelenski, a physician working with the Christian Blind Mission in
Haiti, examined Douce. Then he and his team performed several operations on
her eye, trying to remove all the cancerous tissue. But it wasn't enough.
"Since my start at University Hospital, I saw several children in our
department with identical cancer of the eye," Zelenski said. "Unfortunately,
as a diagnosis institution is not developed here, children arrive at the
hospital too late to save their eyes or even lives. Unexpectedly, childhood
blindness from cancer of the eye is a very serious problem in Haiti."
The sad thing is that Douce need not have died. A simple test, a quick
examination by trained volunteers, could have detected the cancer early
enough to save her.
Gary Downey, a former Peace Crops volunteer who works for the Christian
Blind Mission, which is associated with the United Methodist Committee on
Relief (UMCOR) in Haiti, says the key to being effective against this
disease and many others, is early detection.
"The Methodist Church of Haiti currently has eye clinics or some services in
three parts of the country," Downey wrote in an e-mail message from the
island. "They are hiring and training ophthalmic assistants and they are
requesting funding to train community-level people in detection and referral
of eye diseases to physicians. These are the programs that will eventually
help the children like Douce."
According to Downey the need is very great. "We're just getting started, but
the ultimate hope for the children is building a program that looks out for
them first of all in their own communities," he said.
UMCOR's NGO-Unit (Non-Governmental Organization) is in Haiti trying to help
children like Douce by collaborating with organizations like Christian Blind
Mission - a German NGO.
In 1997, UMCOR, using money donated by United Methodists through the One
Great Hour of Sharing offering, collaborated with the mission on a complete
renovation of the Orlo (Eye, Ear, Nose & Throat) Unit at University
Hospital. The project was so successful that the mission wanted to continue
the association. Greg Kimball, UMCOR's project coordinator at the time,
wrote a proposal for a position called CBM Health Officer. Then Downey was
recruited for the job which entails management of various prevention of
blindness projects in Haiti.
The Rev. Sam Dixon, an UMCOR staff executive, says Downey needs funding to
train people in detection and referral of eye diseases.
"Gary Downey operates the country's national eye care program," Dixon
explained. "And he needs money for that. He has only enough to last through
next year."
United Methodists through UMCOR and its association with Gary Downey and the
Christian Blind Mission, are important to the children of Haiti. 
 Zelenski said Douce's fate was not unusual. "Her case shows the general
condition of eye care in the country," he said. "There is a big deficit of
qualified doctors, diagnostic equipment and facilities for adequate
treatment. Only early diagnosis and urgent adequate surgery could have saved
her life. If the tumor has spread to the orbit or beyond the eye into the
brain, the children die long and painful."
For more information, call Dixon at 202-548-2777.
# # #
*Cathy Farmer is communications director of the United Methodist Church's
Memphis Annual Conference.

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United Methodist News Service
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