Blind leading the blind

Our 81-year-old mother, who resides at St Vincent de Paul, has been going blind for the past six months due to cataract. In July of this year, after months of complaining and pleading, she was due to be taken to St Luke's Hospital to have her eyes checked at the ophthalmic out-patients department because she complained of gradually losing her eyesight, which we also noticed.

When this appointment was due, she was informed that it had been put back to September and when this appointment arrived she was sent back to SVDP and nothing done by the ophthalmologist to cure her deteriorating eyesight.

Since we were very worried that our mother might go blind with cataract, and upon seeing this lack of care and concern, we, her four children, decided to take her for a private consultation. As soon as our mother entered his room, the specialist immediately noticed the advanced stage of cataract in her left eye and told her that she should have taken care of the cataract much earlier. We said nothing to him about the careless and irresponsible treatments she was subjected to at SVDP and at the ophthalmic rooms of St Luke's.

Later, the doctor at SVDP wrote a report, marked urgent and for the attention of Prof. T. Fenech, saying that our mother was discharged prematurely from St Luke's ophthalmic outpatient despite the deteriorated condition of her eyes. Consequently, this report got another appointment for our mother to be taken again to St Luke's ophthalmic outpatients on November 20 at 8.45 a.m.

However, for the second time, our mother had to miss this appointment. The nursing officer in charge at SVDP said that on that same day he had two other patients who also needed to go to St Luke's.

He claimed these two other cases were more urgent than my mother's and there were only two nurses available to accompany patients to St Luke's. Our mother therefore missed her appointment again.

We have now decided to have our mother's cataract removed at a private clinic. Shame on the nursing officer at SVDP and more shame on the eye specialist who "examined" our mother's eyes at St Luke's without doing anything to cure her as he is paid to do.