Injury Date: November 1982

CPI Assistance: Restorative eye surgery.

Nguyen Van Quan was born in 1974 into a farming family of eight members. His family still lives in Le Thuy district of Quang Binh province. In keeping with Vietnamese social expectations, Quan’s siblings are now all married and live with their spouses in their own homes. Family ties are still the ties that bind and even though today Quan is the only one unmarried, all the siblings remain close to each other.

When CPI staff interviewed Quan’s neighbors in his village, the consensus was that the difficulties Quan had faced in his life stemmed from the accident in which he was involved when he was only nine years of age.

It was a cold and rainy afternoon in November of 1982. Quan and his classmates were on their way home from school in Le Thuy district, Quang Binh province. Their only protection from the rain being cheap plastic raincoats, the kids quickened their step down the village dirt road, trying to avoid the deep potholes filled with sticky red mud.

Quan and his best friend, Nguyen Van Ha, walked side by side, and they excitedly discussed what they’d learned at school that day. They were so engrossed in their conversation that they didn’t notice another young boy entertaining himself in some bushes down in the ditch on the side of the road. When Quan and Ha passed him in the ditch, he looked up and saw in Quan and Ha two older boys he could impress.

He stood up, waved his hands, and called out loud, “Hey, I’ve just found a really neat ball! Come on over here and see it!” Quan and Ha looked at him but didn’t stop their conversation and continued on, paying no attention to the boy. Incensed that the older boys didn’t even stop to say hello, the boy bent down, picked up the ball, and threw it angrily at Quan and Ha.

That one impulsive movement cost the young boy his life.

The bomb hit the ground and exploded on impact. All three boys collapsed. The boy who threw the bomb was killed immediately; Quan and Ha were both seriously injured. Quan and Ha’s other schoolmates, terrified by the scene they just witnessed, and panicked by the carnage in front of them, sprinted back to school to get help from their teachers. Their quick response may have saved both Quan and Ha’s life.

Even though Quan and Ha survived, they sustained similar serious injuries. Both boys tragically lost an eye in the accident. To make matters worse, the damage to their remaining eyes was so severe that they were to live the rest of their lives with only 30% of normal eyesight. Even following hospital treatment, they could barely see a faint shadow of someone standing in front of them.

After ten years being almost blind, Quan and Ha were approached by CPI staff and asked if they were interested in pursuing more intensive eye treatment. They were both hesitant and doubtful of the success of invasive eye surgery. Both men agreed that if they decided to have the surgery done, and things went wrong, they could possibly end up completely blind.

CPI staff persisted, however, and explained their faith in the physicians that could perform the procedure. Ha was the first to agree to have the surgery done. Quan soon followed suit once he witnessed the reassuring results from Ha’s procedure; the eyesight in his remaining eye was restored to 80% of what it had been before the accident.

Quan’s surgery proved to be just as successful, and he too had 80% of his eyesight restored to what it had been before the accident. CPI covered the entire cost of both surgeries. CPI also covered the cost of transportation to and from the hospital, and since patients are required to provide their own meals while hospitalized, CPI provided them with full meal support.