Young Jose was playing outside when a metal pointed object hit him in the left eye causing a three-millimeter laceration. Although alarmed, his mom didn’t bring him to the doctor immediately because he was a strong boy and thought he'd heal on his own. However neither of them knew how bad the injury really was.
The next day, Jose’s eye started emitting a watery liquid and became visibly inflamed. His mom took him straight to the emergency room where doctors sewed up his eye with a few stitches, but also told them that Jose had a traumatic cataract and would likely need a cornea and intraocular len transplant given how badly his cornea was damaged. Without the transplant, Jose would likely lose vision in his left eye.
Five days later, a friend working in the local medical community told Jose's mom that Orbis was coming to Lima for the first time in 1991. Jose and his mom reported to the Instituto Nacional de Oftalmologia (INO), Orbis’s local partner hospital in the city, with hopes of being chosen for an operation.