By Donna Campbell | Executive Director
You probably think that your donation helps one blind person, maybe two or three. Wrong!
Blindness affects an entire family. If a father is blind, his family has no livelihood. If a grandmother is blind, someone needs to stay home from school or work to take care of her. If a child is blind, she may never go to school, get a job, or get married. Your donation goes much, much farther than you think.
Now in its tenth year, Aravind's Ring of Hope Fund pays for treatment of patients -- primarily children -- who suffer from retinoblastoma, a life and sight-threatening form of eye cancer. Last year, 430 patients received free surgery, chemotherapy and radiation and custom-prostheses, bringing the total number of patients helped to more than 1300. Thank you!
Aravind provides not only free treatment to the patient, but support to the whole family. Often patients come to Aravind with other family troubles – unemployment, other illnesses, money problems – the doctors and sisters at Aravind bring hope to everyone involved.
Sathish and his family are a typical Ring of Hope story. His parents brought Sathish to Aravind Eye hospital when he was just two years old. Both eyes were affected with retinoblastoma, and his left eye had to be removed to keep the cancer from spreading. Around the same time Sathish’s father was diagnosed with stomach cancer and died shortly thereafter.
Sathish and his mother were devastated by his father’s death – and left without an earning member of the family. Under these difficult conditions, Sathish’s mother found it nearly impossible to continue his treatment. Ring of Hope stepped in and paid for all Sathish’s treatment expenses, plus the family’s food and travel. Sathish was fitted with a custom prosthetic to replace his left eye, and received chemotherapy to save his right eye.
Today, Sathish is free from cancer and excelling in second grade. His mother passed her government exams, and was appointed Village Administrative Officer. The family is grateful to Global Giving donors who helped them through a very tough time.
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