Last May, in the first operation, Dr. Stephen Ginsberg transplanted a new cornea into Jarai’s right eye, improving her vision from somewhere between 20⁄200 and 20⁄400 to somewhere between 20⁄80 and 20⁄100, he said. He also removed white scar tissue from the eye. She has no vision in her left eye, but in a second procedure on Feb. 6, Ginsberg straightened the muscles behind that eye to keep it from drifting, as happens after years without use, and injected it with dye to improve its color.
Early in the decade, a civil war in Sierra Leone forced Jarai’s parents to flee with Jarai and her older brother to neighboring Guinea. There, Jarai contracted measles and suffered corneal scarring, in which the transparent tissue that covers the front of the eye and lets in light becomes dried and covered in white scar tissue. Corneal scarring is the most common cause of childhood blindness.
When the family returned to Sierra Leone, doctors were unable to help Jarai and, at first, wrongly diagnosed her with cataracts.
‘‘We never had a good doctor to take care of her,” said Juldeh Bah, who added that her daughter couldn’t attend school because of her blindness and the constant teasing of other children. Without proper medical treatment, it seemed unlikely that Jarai’s condition would ever improve.
But then last year, the family was visited by Henry Sloe, a cousin of Jarai’s father, who left Sierra Leone in 1996 and lives in Glenn Dale. Sloe said he would find a way to help.
When he returned to the United States, Sloe approached Ginsberg, a resident at Somerset House, a condominium complex in Chevy Chase where Sloe is director of operations. Ginsberg specializes in corneal transplants, the procedure Jarai needed.
‘‘He said, ‘If you can get her here, I’ll do the surgery,’” Sloe recalled.
Getting Jarai and her mother to the United States took some work, Sloe said, but he eventually secured a humanitarian visa with the help of a lawyer and congressional staffer who lived at Somerset. Residents at Somerset donated more than $11,000 for the couple’s airfare and expenses, said Sloe, who has housed Jarai and her mother for the last seven months.
On Feb. 6, the day of the second surgery, Jarai, her mother and Sloe sat in a waiting room at Washington Adventist, where they are now well-known to the Takoma Park hospital’s staff. Jarai, a shy girl who has been attending first grade at Glenn Dale Elementary School, simply shook her head when asked if she was scared.
‘‘When she first arrived, she was probably 10 pounds thinner than she is now, and she’s tiny now,” Ginsberg said. ‘‘When I first walked into the room, she was timid. She wouldn’t even look at me, and they had to prod her to say hello.”
This time, when Ginsberg came out in his scrubs, Jarai walked up and gave him a hug.
After the surgery, Ginsberg said the cornea scar turned out to be too strong for the dye to be injected properly. He said he would like to fit Jarai with a plastic prosthetic shell that would cover the scar.
Jarai’s mother said she is glad that someone has been able to help her daughter, and that she is thankful to everyone, from Sloe and Ginsberg to the residents at Somerset House and staff at Washington Adventist, which donated the use of its facilities.
Though she’s been separated from her husband and 12-year-old son for more than seven months, Juldeh Bah said the journey has been worth it.
‘‘It’s not hard at all,” she said. ‘‘For my daughter, I would do anything to be sure she’d be OK.”
