A lost four-year-old girl in the capital of Ghana. Unable to focus well. An orphanage. A fortunate encounter between Sekina and the Ruta de la Luz Foundation. A month in Spain to operate on her cataracts. Her gaze changes. Her future, too... (beginning of the report «Sekina's Eyes». Clara Terrero, Sunday magazine El País, Madrid, 4/9/05).
The Cuban journalist Alina Perera Robbio, from the Juventud Rebelde newspaper, says: «It was almost an adventure to find Nataly Pérez». Nataly is an eight-year-old Venezuelan girl. «Nataly spoke scarcely, in her dialect (piaroa). The uncle translated the short phrases she said to us... She looked so happy!... Who would have told this girl that someone was going to come for her to the Amazon jungle to save her sight?» (Orbe, Prensa Latina, 10-23/9/05).
And it is amidst bustle and chaos where Sekina got lost, a woman picked her up and took her to the police, who transferred the minor to the Department of Social Welfare. On August 9 of last year she was transferred to Osu Children's Home, the largest public orphanage in Ghana... Despite the fact that her gaze was elusive and her eyes were always moving, forcing her to frown and adopt forced expressions in order to fix her gaze, no one had taken her to the ophthalmologist» (Terrero, idem).
Both girls saved their eyes. Sekina, thanks to the assistance of the Ruta de la Luz Foundation, promoted by Cione Grupo de Opticas, a cooperative formed by 900 Spanish opticians. Nataly, thanks to one of the cooperation agreements between the governments of Cuba and Venezuela.
Terrero: «... another thing that surprises us all is how (Sekina) eats everything non-stop, and without leaving a crumb. Her favorites are meat and petit suisse. In Ghana, the children in the orphanage do not usually have dessert. She probably hadn't tasted yogurt before. She eats two every day. Milk, another product of daily consumption here, she loves it; in Ghana it is a luxury item...»
Perera Robbio: «We met children, adults and the elderly who no longer remembered what light was like and suddenly recovered their sight; we found very humble people, lacking resources and medical attention, who had gone blind... On that journey I often cried with joy for the families and for seeing their gratitude. They received us with attention and opened their doors to us...»
Terrero: «Today (Sekina) tells me that she is brown, pointing to her skin. ‘Why? Who made me like this?' A girl in the park tells her that she is black. But she gets angry. ‘No, I'm not black, I'm brown'...»
In 2004, Sekina was among the 450 beneficiaries of the Catalan foundation. And Nataly was among the 600,000 Venezuelans with ophthalmological problems benefited by the bilateral mission Compromiso de Sandino (or Operación Milagro, according to the beneficiaries). Until August 21, 50,000 more Venezuelans had recovered their sight in Cuba. The most common operations are for cataracts and strabismus.
In 2002, a total of 748 Cuban doctors, nurses and health technicians had provided services free of charge in dangerous places and remote locations in Venezuelan territory where such services did not exist. In 2004, the total number of Cuban doctors in Venezuela amounted to 1,168 throughout the country.
Thanks to the Barrio Adentro program, tens of thousands of Venezuelans saved or restored their health in recurrent pathologies such as skin, respiratory and high blood pressure diseases. In the Libertador and Sucre municipalities alone, 285,154 and 206,131 patients were treated, with 668 lives saved and 169,081 people treated in their homes.
At the end of 2002, 3,042 Venezuelan patients with serious pathologies and conditions whose treatments (highly complex surgical interventions, examinations, medications, hospitalization) would have cost the Venezuelan government millions of dollars had been treated in Cuban health institutions (free of charge).
In the places where the so-called white guerrilla works, the infant mortality rate was reduced from 19.5 to 3.8 per thousand live births. At the Latin American School of Medical Sciences in Havana, 380 young Venezuelans are studying completely free of charge, who, due to their humble origins, would have been unable to cover the costs of a university career.
Terrero: «(Sekina) will soon forget those who have cared for and pampered her those days in Spain. However, her vision will always remind her that one day she traveled to a country in the north where a group of people changed her life».
Perera Robbio: «...hearing the news that Operación Milagro is going to multiply is fabulous... It is not difficult to imagine that this is a real way out open to those in need on the continent».