(16 Sep 2018) LEADIN:
War and poverty have scarred the lives of the Yemeni people, with many not having access to healthcare while disease flourishes.
But for the people of one village there is another scourge – blindness.
STORYLINE:
In this remote Yemeni village, a large number of residents are forced to feel their way through life.
With a population of 200, the village of Mahat has a far higher incidence of blindness than the regular population.
Seventy villagers are blind, or severely visually impaired.
The village is poor, most of its houses are rough constructions made of sticks.
Many of its men are jobless and families depend on small agricultural plots, or livestock.
Even these however are now endangered by the desert’s encroaching sand dunes.
Civil warfare since 2015 has meant the village has become poorer and underserved by government services. Many people are barely getting by.
One of the younger generation is Fares Ali.
Ali is completely blind, and struggling to study literature at university.
He rides on the back of a motorbike many days to get to his classes which are in the province’s capital Lahj, 50 kilometers away.
Sometimes he has to get a taxi, but he says this is very expensive.
“I face difficulties with transport in how I manage to move around, or the price. I sometimes pay 2000 Yemen rials (roughly 4 USD) for a car, or 1000 rials or more (roughly 2 USD) for a motorbike, so I can get to university every day.”
Local farmers hire Ali to sell their produce so he can raise some money for his school fees, but the henna he sells doesn’t always fetch a good price:
“And also, for the henna (a farm product which he often sells) I only get 50 or 100 rials for it, and it’s not enough for us. We’re living, thank God, and thank him, but it’s not enough,” he says.
Ali also helps to take care of the family’s animals, but his hope is that he’ll be able to complete his studies and get a job.
The type of blindness many of the villagers have appears to be genetic, according to local doctors, the result of a predisposition which has been passed down through generations of intermarriage.
They say the blindness usually manifests itself in children several months after birth, when the child’s optic nerves fail to develop properly.
It’s due to a mutation of chromosomes responsible for the formation of the retina, and there’s no known treatment.
It’s common for cousins to marry in Yemen, but in the case of this remote village, doctors believe centuries of interbreeding has led to the children of these marriages being blind.
Villager Saleh Neymas says that six of his brothers and sisters have the disease.
“My brother is sitting here in front of you, he can’t see anything, and he’s sick and frail. And he needs taking care of,” says Neymas. “So this is my brother, and this is our situation. And there’s no work. Sometimes we gather firewood, but that’s it. We’re either gathering fire wood, or just sitting here.”
Proper medical care is unlikely amid the ongoing fighting between the Houthi rebels, in the north of the country and a Saudi-led coalition allied with the internationally recognised government in the South.
The local physician is Nasser Ali Nasser, he doesn’t hold out much hope of change.
“The cause of the problem is the marriage of relatives. That’s the main reason (for the blindness),” says Nasser.
The conflict has also led to the displacement of some 3 million Yemenis making the most basic healthcare scarce for much of the population.
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