WHEN Esther Kalaile, 24, grew worried about the milky film over her baby Nayianoi’s eyes, she strapped the infant to her back and trekked 30 miles through lion country to see if anything could be done.

“It makes me so sad that my child’s eyes cannot focus on my face,” she told the staff at a clinic on the edge of Kenya’s Masai Mara game reserve. The paramedics diagnosed congenital cataracts. Six-month-old Nayianoi was technically blind but a simple operation costing £27 could restore the sight in both eyes.

Nayianoi is lucky. Every year up to 500,000 children go blind in the world; one every minute. This year our Christmas appeal, The Sunday Times Seeing Is Believing campaign, aims to prevent it happening.

If every reader of this newspaper spared 50p this Christmas, the next wave of children at risk could be saved from going blind and 1m more people could have their sight restored.

“It has taken a mother’s love for her child to identify Nayianoi’s problem,” said Bill McAllister, national director of the charity CBM (formerly the Christian Blind Mission), which funds an eye clinic at the Kikuyu hospital in Nairobi where Nayianoi will undergo the operation.

He added: “We are carrying out nearly 750,000 cataract operations a year in the developing world, half as many again as take place in Britain.

“Blindness can be seen as a demonic sickness in some cultures so it is important we do a good job. The best kind of advertising is a quality product and that is why people walk great distances to our clinics.”

CBM is one of several charities joining companies and government departments in helping to prevent avoidable blindness in the Third World. As well as providing bush clinics and eye hospitals, it sends flying doctors into strife-torn countries such as Somalia and Sudan.

Just 50p can provide one child with enough vitamin A to protect eyesight for a year while £17 pays for a cataract operation for an adult. It takes 20 minutes to replace someone’s clouded lens with an artificial one in a bush clinic.

The cost is £10 more for children like Nayianoi because they need a general anaesthetic and the sterile surroundings of a hospital.

Almost half the world’s 37m blind people suffer because of cataracts that can be operated on. A £5 donation can provide a basic eye test and spectacles so that a child with impaired vision can attend a normal school.

Allen Foster, the CBM’s president, said: “As many as one in 20 children in Africa and Asia cannot see well at school because they need spectacles, although the correction of near and long sightedness is simple and inexpensive — less than £5 for a pair of spectacles for a child in Africa.

“This small amount of money can make a big difference to the life of a boy or girl, who can then study at school, read what the teacher has written on the board for the first time in their lives, and have the chance of education and future self-betterment.”

For every £1 given by readers of The Sunday Times, Standard Chartered bank will give £1, up to a maximum of £2.5m. The bank started its programme in 2003 as part of its 150th anniversary celebrations.

Richard Meddings, the bank’s group executive director and chairman of the Seeing Is Believing advisory committee, said: “The success of our business and the health of the communities we operate in are inextricably linked. Avoidable blindness can be overcome often through a simple procedure and for a relatively low cost and we are proud to be able to make a difference.”

To donate securely via the web, visit www.timesonline.co.uk/seeingisbelieving or fill in the coupon on page 17 of The Sunday Times Magazine

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