He’s joking, but he’s not wrong. Since Abiyot began working, he hasn’t had a single complication in any of his surgeries. In his 20 day training alone, he performed 32 surgeries; he was the first in the training process to do this.
Abiyot works from a small surgery, with just one bed and sterilised surgical instruments. He covers two health centres, performing up to 50 trachomatous trichiasis surgeries a month. He also performs home visits, and says this is where he is able to “find the cases”, before bringing them to the health centre for treatment.
Colleagues say he is “wonderful”. During our visit, while walking through one of the communities Abiyot works in, an old woman, who happened to be walking past, stopped him. They spoke briefly, and he checked her eyes there and then. He is clearly trusted. During a day spent at one of the health centres Abiyot covers, he had bought lunch for patients treated that day, as well as the family members who had come with them.
One of Abiyot’s patients is Malate, whom he performed trachoma surgery on. We first met Malate at the Chencha health care center. She was waiting for Abiyot.
Malate tells us about her eyesight issues “For more than a year I’ve been suffering with this eye problem. It started with tearing, then throbbing eye pain."
Repeated trachoma infections caused severe scarring on the inside of Malate's eyelids, and her eyelashes have turned inward.
Malate says Abiyot has helped her a great deal - they met during a community campaign about trachoma treatment and prevention. All of Malate’s community came out to hear Abiyot speak about an upcoming outreach programme.
