Mom seeks help for blind baby
Stories of people in need are staple fare on this newscast… and once again we are asking viewers to watch with a sympathetic eye and generous spirit. Janelle Chanona reports.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
Five month old Noel Reina has never seen his mother. Born three months premature, the infant later developed a serious eye condition.
Elena Reina, Mother
“Something come over his eye and he start give a lot of trouble and then his eye used to get swell up, swell up. I feel sorry fu ah, because he born sick and when he born, he mi just have two pounds. He suffers a lot, so I feel sorry fu ah.”
Noel’s illness has been hard on his mother, nineteen year old Elena Reina. The unemployed single woman has come to depend on her family for basic survival, moving into her sister’s house. Finding money to buy the baby’s medicines has not been easy.
Dr. Miguel Rosado is Noel’s paediatrician. This is the first such case Rosado has treated in Belize. The possibilities of cancer and tumours have already been ruled out, but specific diagnosis required high tech equipment not available in Belize. The Reinas had to be quickly referred to an ophthalmology unit in Guatemala City.
Dr. Miguel Rosado, Paediatrician
“Due to the rapidity of the installation of the whiteness of the eye, especially the right eye, then the left one, we knew that we had an emergency. The whitening of the iris, for example you see the iris and the pupil, for example this one has a re-stabilisation of the colour of the eye together with the pupil. But then this one is lost, and that what they call leukokoria.”
“The emergency is that if the child does not receive the surgery in an urgent manner, the child can lose eyesight, especially the right eye at this moment. The left eye is doing okay, but we need to work on the right one.”
By bus, Reina rushed her baby to the unit in Guatemala where eye doctors performed a preliminary procedure on one of Noel’s eyes.
Elena Reina
“They tell me they need to give ah four operations. They have to give him two before to tek out the pressure out ah his eye or else he might lose the eye.”
“He give lot of trouble and sometimes he no left me to sleep all night. Before I mi ker (take) ah to Guatemala he mi give me lot a trouble because he get pain inna his eye.”
Dr. Rosado
“We need to move as fast as possible. Every day that passes, the child will have a problem that we can be running the risk of the child getting blind, especially with the right eye. So the sooner the person moves or the child receives the surgery, the faster or the better the prognosis.”
Minister Dolores Balderamos Garcia has already promised financial support to the Reina family, but they are desperately in need of the public’s help.
Dr. Miguel Rosado
“If anybody out there can help the child we’ll be saving an eye or both eyes because, the child will continue to need ophthalmologic follow-ups after the surgeries. So that is very important.”
Elena Reina
“If they could donate something, because every lee thing weh they donate still wah help out me. And it no have to be lat, eh could be any amount.”
If you would like to help the Reinas, please contact Dr. Miguel Rosado at Universal Health Services at phone numbers 223-7873 or 223-4504. Reporting for News 5, I am Janelle Chanona.
Noel Reina’s first surgery in Guatemala City cost the family fifteen hundred Belize dollars. It is expected he will require at least four more operations. Again, that number for Dr. Rosado is 223-7873.
