- How we Help
- Where we work
- Asia
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- Burkina Faso
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- Protected in Guinea
- Guinea Bissau
- Guinea Conakry
- Our Successes
- Achievements
- Last years highlights
- People we've helped
- Eliminating the problem
- Demonstrating success
- Village Vision
- Sorufa's Story
- Mohammad's New Business
- Protecting a Child's Future
- Restoring Sight in Bangladesh
- Top of the Class
- Africa without river blindness
- Hakim's Story
- Reaching more children
- Abdoulie's Story
- Talking to Angeline Akai
- Mama's Independance
- Lasoi's Story
- Saving Sight
- Kaduna State
- Caught in Time
- Learn More
Mariama (centre) at the Labe eye unit where she has worked there since 1996. She is very popular with her students who speak very highly of her! © Laura Crow / Sightsavers
A greater reach
Mariama Dulanda Dueng is one of the inspirational characters delivering our work in Sub-Sarharan Africa. She works at the Labe Eye Care Unit in Guinea, and is responsible for training new eye care students.
Her role in the eye unit is a diverse one, including training students in eye care, seeing patients and training teachers to identify children in their classes who need support for eye issues. As well as having such a busy and varied job, she is also mother to four children who live at home!
“I really love and am inspired by this work. There were many blind people in my community growing up and one of them was my aunt. She was ill, went blind then she died. This gave me the courage to pursue this career.
Every month we train around 24 students in eye care, who are often from rural areas. We get the students working on practical cases so they can learn straight away. They learn about patient care, to recognise what a cataract looks like and how to identify trachoma in children. I make time to listen to the students. I listen to their needs and if I sense that they don’t understand I keep explaining and repeating the lesson in different ways until it makes sense to them. I show the students the importance of what they are doing: they will be able to protect themselves, their families and their communities.
My hope for the students is that they will represent us in regions that we cannot reach. I hope that they will protect the patients from traditional medicine practices - that can damage and even destroy the eye - and direct them here to the eye clinic.
The best thing about my job is the humanitarian act of helping people and saving their sight. I will usually see between 20 and 100 patients a day, and test their eyes using an eye chart, or machines to check their eyes up close. I get patients to do a visual acuity test, where they have to describe the direction of the ‘E’ on the chart I am holding up. (Sunrise or sunset, up or down).
Protecting children’s eyes
When the students don’t have exams we go outside the clinic to hold school outreach screenings. Because we are so busy here, I also train teachers how to check their pupils’ eyes. They learn how to use a letter chart, and if there are any pupils who have trouble reading the third line then the teachers will refer them here.
I spend the morning with patients and the afternoon with students. I then rush to the market to pick up things I need to make dinner and look after the home. When I get home I shower, eat, pray, and then go to bed as I’m so tired after my day at the eye clinic!
My hopes for the future are that there are fewer problems with eyesight and that there are means to take care of everyone. I hope our eye clinic continues to go from strength to strength.”
