Children Get A New Lease Of Life With Heartening Surgeries

Globally and across the Middle East and North Africa, squint prevalence is 15 per cent among children, ages three to 10, with vertical squint accounting for 20 per cent

- Mariecar Jara-Puyod

SHARJAH

A four-year-old boy is now a kindergarten pupil after successful eye surgery in September at the University Hospital Sharjah (UHS).

“He joined the school this year. It is his first time to be enrolled. I am happy for my little boy,” Abu Hazim Albakar said in a telephone interview on Sunday afternoon.

Albakar’s son is Youssef whom he had spotted to have a poor eye vision two years back yet: “Well, you can know it. I knew it. I saw it.”

“We consulted a doctor last year. It is only this year, last September, that we went for the surgery upon the doctor’s advice,” Albakar continued, confirming that with the necessary critical eye surgery for a young child, proper timing had to be factored in.

Youssef’s eye problem, according to UHS-Paediatric Ophthalmology consultant Dr Qasem Mubarak Al Hammouri, is called the “Superior Oblique Type of Vertical Squint, a very rare case.”

Al Hammouri told Gulf Today that globally and across the Middle East and North Africa, squint prevalence is 15 per cent among children, ages three to 10, with vertical squint accounting for 20 per cent.