Sensation of sight celebrated in Modimolle
This visionary private institution, a ground-breaking initiative in South Africa, tackles the pressing issue of preventable blindness in Limpopo's rural areas.
The doccie followed the emotional journey of patients who have already been helped at the hospital, from the struggles of blindness to the joy of sight regained. Thousands of people in Limpopo live with visual impairment due to untreated cataracts – clouding of the eye's lens – leading to complete blindness and leaving only the perception of light. This condition can be reversed through a simple surgical procedure to remove the cataract and implant an artificial lens. Resulting, in restored eyesight in just one day.
Limpopo put its best foot forward for a spectacular opening that befits its Hope for the Blind (HFTB), a non-profit eye hospital based in Modimolle. This medical breakthrough institution in the Waterberg region will deliver unique vision services to help minimise the growing medical shortfalls countrywide.
The hospital – an impressive example of nation collaboration and science and art uniquely joining hands – was applauded by the VIPS and guests attending the gala opening. It coincided with the opening of the art gallery at the hospital.
'I'm just totally in awe when human beings take the time, effort, and energy to use their God-given skills to create goodness. All of us, as human beings, should stand in awe of that. Because truthfully, only a few of us actually do it in life,' said the honourable Justice Dikgang Moseneke, retired deputy chief justice of South Africa.
According to him 'Hope for the Blind reminds all of us – and our nation – of the importance of accepting that we have varied skills, different appearances, and diverse backgrounds and upbringings. But at the core of it all is a shared humanity: good, worthy, and deserving of our respect, protection, and support'.
The Hope for the Blind Trust was founded by ophthalmologists and medical personnel working and trained in the Limpopo province, under the leadership of local eye specialist Dr. Frits Stegmann.
The hospital welcomes donations directly and thus helping restore sight to those in need, delivered at a reduced rate of R18 000 per cataract surgery covering all surgical and material expenses. Supporters can also contribute by buying artwork from the First Light portfolio.
The inaugural First Light Art Exhibition was part of the grand opening. It includes over R1 million worth of art by key South African artists including William Kentridge and Nelson Makamo. The exhibition will run until 14 May 2025 at the HFTB Hospital.
The First Light documentary shown on Saturday will premiere online on Friday, 18 April 2025 and will be showcased with the art works at the Latitudes Art Fair in Johannesburg from 23 – 25 May 2025.
For more information and to donate, visit: www.hopefortheblind.org.za(.)
At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
IOL News
2 hours ago
- IOL News
The inspiring story of Pippie Kruger: A resilient burn survivor celebrating her 16th birthday
Pippie Kruger, who suffered 80% burn wounds in 2011 when ignition gel exploded during a family braai, celebrated her 16th birthday last week. Image: Supplied In 2011, a family braai turned into a nightmare for the Kruger family when their daughter Pippie, then two, sustained 80% burns when a fire starter gel exploded on New Year's Eve. But this survivor celebrated her 16th birthday last week, and besides all the hardships she had to endure, she is a happy teenager. Her mother, Anice Kruger, described Pippie as the love of her life, and although she cannot walk or go to school, the mother said she will never describe her child as being handicapped. 'To me, she is just perfect as she is,' she said. The freak fire had devoured almost all of her skin, and after 77 operations over the years, her family decided enough was enough. The family lived on a farm in Lephalale, Limpopo, at the time, and it was a 400km ambulance ride to Netcare's Garden City Hospital. Doctors at the time did not hold much hope for her recovery. But Pippie proved to be a fighter, and more than five months after the accident, which left her with burns on her chest, arms, face, thighs, head, and parts of her back, the then-toddler crossed the frontier of cutting-edge medicine by becoming the first South African to have plastic-like sheets of her skin, grown for her in a US lab in Boston, delicately grafted onto her wounded body. Over the years, she underwent various skin grafts and other operations. The shock of the burns on her body resulted in her having several heart attacks, which led to strokes and the collapse of her lungs. She also developed cerebral palsy due to a lack of oxygen to her brain. The then-little girl who touched the hearts of many following her accident, which made headlines at the time, is now a happy teenager, her mother said following her 16th birthday celebration. 'She lives 100% fully for each day. She wakes up with a smile, and she goes to bed with a smile. She does her own thing, and she is simply the most wonderful young lady. Pippie never cries, and she is never upset,' Kruger said. Pippie can, however, be very 'cheeky', but considering she is a teenager, this is normal, her mother said. According to Kruger, she does not think Pippie remembers very well what happened to her. 'There was a time when she went through very bad trauma, and for months she could not sleep at night. That was a very difficult time in her life, but I think there was a level of acceptance on her part.' She said this was around 2023 at the end of her last round of operations. 'Thereafter, we decided we are done with operations unless it is necessary. We just want to stop the trauma for her.' Kruger added that she battles using the word handicapped in describing her daughter, although she had five strokes of which the doctors are aware, and her lungs, which collapsed twice. 'There was an oxygen deficiency to the brain, so Pippie cannot sit, nor can she stand. She can do nothing for herself, apart from playing and being happy. But we no longer see this as handicapped. We see her as 100% perfect.' Kruger said she will always take care of her daughter. 'We are taking things day by day, and I do not think too far ahead. We are living each day full out. Tomorrow must take care of itself. I am not one of those mothers who had big dreams for her after the accident. As long as she is happy, I am happy,' she said. [email protected]
Daily Maverick
21 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Bugs sent into battle — meet the SA team using insects instead of pesticides to tackle invasive plants
Sustenance farmers are hit the hardest by the impacts of invasive plant species. Scientists are working to change that, but they face challenges. South African farmers spend about R1,200 per hectare on weed control, including herbicide application and other methods, according to an estimation from 2021. Their costs also include diesel for machinery, crop insurance and harvesting. Although commercial farmers feel the costs, they often have resources to buy pesticides, herbicides and manual labour to ensure their crops do well and the land is workable. Daily Maverick visited sustenance farmers in northern KwaZulu-Natal who were losing thousands of their goats to an illness they claim is from an invasive plant species – parthenium. In KwaNongoma, the weed is visible throughout the grazing land, and it is highly competitive with grass. It also causes rashes in children after long-term exposure, along with other effects. Daily Maverick visited the Plant Health and Protection unit of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC-PHP) in Hilton, Pietermaritzburg, where scientists focus on ecologically sound management strategies for agricultural pests, plant diseases and invasive plants. One of the researchers, Lorraine Strathie, said invasive plant species can be controlled by bringing insects from their country of origin to feed on them here. But if this sounds simple, it is not. The process takes devotion, trial and error and collaboration. 'For example, parthenium is indigenous to the lands around the Gulf of Mexico in North America. So in its native range, in their native range, plants have evolved for millions of years, and they have natural enemies in the form of insects which feed on them, fungi and other pathogens. So it's what we call top-down control,' she said. 'So, they reduce their reproductive output, the number of seeds they produce, and their growth rates. And these insects, many of these natural enemies, because the plants produce defensive chemicals, most of the insects and fungi that feed on them have become highly specialised to get around those chemicals and other defences. So they become highly, what we call host-specific – they only feed on one species of plant.' Entomologists and those in related sciences dedicate years to understanding which control agents are likely to be suitable to bring to South Africa. When the insects get here they are quarantined and numerous tests and observations are done to make sure they don't have a taste for South African plants, which would add them to a long list of pests instead of control agents. 'So one of the main theories is that when a plant is taken out of its native environment and brought to another continent, the natural enemies don't come with it because it comes as a seed, and then it can grow without any kind of top-down control. And its growth rates increase, its seed output increases, and it outcompetes the local plants. Then it becomes invasive,' Strathie said. The ARC-PHP was established in 1962 with the amalgamation of the divisions of eEntomology and plant pathology of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Challenges The challenge with this science is that it can take time and needs the land these agents have been placed on to not be disturbed by pesticides, herbicides and building. This requires land owners to cooperate with the team so they can check the population they have released every year to see how much it has grown, how far it has spread and the impact. To achieve optimal biological control, studies have shown that 'integrating various biological control options that include classical biological control, mycoherbicides and suppressive plants with management tools such as chemical, physical, grazing management and cultural management is desirable'. Dr Costas Zachariades, officer-in-charge and senior researcher in the ARC-PHP, explained that the population starts breeding by itself and feeds on the plant, and spreads by itself. 'So once we've got past that stage of what we call establishing the population, then it becomes self-sustaining, and it doesn't need any more human intervention. And so with weed control you have to keep on spraying with herbicide, uprooting manually, doing what you're doing. So there's always human intervention required on an ongoing basis, whereas with weed biocontrol, that is not needed. So it's a long-term, sustainable solution. The downsides are that it takes a long time,' Zachariades said. It could take up to 20 years for the biocontrol agent to reach its full potential – that is, being widespread over large areas, the plant has decreased and invasive plant growth is naturally stifled. But it could be effective in three to five years, according to the scientists. Community resistance Affected people, such as those in agricultural communities with small-scale farmers, have been resistant to the idea, worried that the agents will start eating their crops once the weeds are gone. Strathie emphasised that this is the core of their work in the quarantine lab, over and above growing the insect population – they do a number of tests to ensure the agent only eats that weed and nothing else. 'It's a very common perception. A lot of growers will know that some insects or pathogens can be highly host-specific,' she said. Even in the case of lantana, which had many different hybrids and varieties, some of the insects were so specific that they might only go for a certain colour of a certain hybrid. The agents could have certain chemical cues they required for attraction to a plant, as well as for mating and feeding. 'So the natural enemies we're using are really host-specific.' In the lab the team showed how the insects are not only plant-specific but eat specific parts of the plant – some eat the stem, some like the leaves, some lay eggs on the flowers, thereby crippling the invasive plant's growth. '… we ensure that whatever is released into the environment is completely safe. I mean, the science of weed biocontrol has been around for 112 years in South Africa, and South Africa is one of the leading countries in the world in this science. So it's quite a small community of weed biocontrol researchers in the country, but the science is very rigorous, we're not going to be introducing something that's going to be potentially harmful on other plants,' Strathie added. Funding This work appears to be significant in ensuring biodiversity, especially as civil society organisations are calling for the banning of a number of pesticides. And this team considers itself lucky because it receives funding from the Department of Agriculture, while other teams doing similar work have stopped due to a lack of funding. 'Funding, I think, globally is challenging, and invasive species often are not recognised for the level of importance of how they impact on people's livelihoods, not only from conservation, but food production and health,' Strathie said 'And I think there's generally not a common understanding of what kind of impact they may have. And I think [that] for research it's critical, and especially this type of research needs sustained funding for long periods, and once you have a biological control agent to be able to reap the benefits of all that investment. Developing a biocontrol agent, you then need government's national support to ensure it's rolled out to its full benefit.' Mass rearing for impact The team explained that a mass release of the tried-and-tested control agents has made an impact in biocontrol in affected provinces such as Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal. This is made possible by the Department of Agriculture, which has been supporting the programme since 2023. 'But also previously, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) were the major funders for biological control of weeds in South Africa. So there was a lot of R&D done in those decades with DFFE that we now also benefit from South Africa being able to [mass-rear] those agents,' Strathie said. Zachariades added that they have six major weeds currently, for which they have multiple biocontrol agents being mass reared at the unit and at Brunner Plot in Pretoria, a sister institute. Which meant that, if there were no more funding to mass-rear the agents, 'we can hasten their impact by releasing more of them and more often at many sites'. 'So, for example, for parthenium insect agents, we've got three of them, and we've got something like 400 release points already, and those will just keep increasing in KZN and Mpumalanga, because those are where the weed is most prevalent at the moment. It's in other provinces as well, but those are where it's really severely invading.' The team had also mass-reared agents for commelina, lantana pompom weed ('which is problematic on the high field at this stage') and Tecoma stans, or yellow bells ('it's become a big weed along the coast here') as well as the Mexican sunflower, all of which pose a threat to indigenous flora. DM
The South African
a day ago
- The South African
SA government warns against fake news on Covid-19 variant
The Government has sounded the alarm for a fake news alert regarding a new Covid-19 variant. Taking to social media, the South African government warned citizens of the false post, by sharing the picture with a huge red fake across it. FAKE POST CLAIMS VIRUS IS DEADLY A post that has been widely shared across social media suggests a Covid-Omicron XBB is contagious, violent and deadly. The post reads, 'Several patients diagnosed with Covid Omicron XBB were finally classified as having no fever, no pain, but X-ray results showed mild chest pneumonia. Nasal swab tests frequently provide negative results for Covid-Omicron XBB, and cases of nasopharyngeal tests providing false negative results are increasing.' The post also suggested that the virus can be easily and affect lungs, causing viral pneumonia, which can cause acute respiratory stress. Meanwhile, the Department of Health shared that South Africa is closely monitoring the emergence of a new Covid-19 variant, known as Nimbus or NB.1.8.1. The government previously warned that anyone who creates or spreads fake news about the Coronavirus Covid-19 is liable for prosecution. They also warned that information should be verified before it is shared. You can report fake news through the Real411 website: HAVE YOU EVER FALLEN FOR A FAKE NEWS STORY? Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 11. Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news
