12 year old Safae Zouinate is yet another case successfully treated by our Etnia Barcelona Foundation.
She came to see us at the Bayt al Thaqafa Foundation in Sant Vicenç dels Horts. Straight away we realised she had serious problems with visual fixation: she had great difficulty in looking at you steadily when speaking to you and found it hard to properly coordinate her eye movement. This made reading tough and her ability to focus was not what one would have expected of a child of her age. Her problems also affected other activities, such as her ability to copy from the blackboard.
She received 12 sessions of treatment and, the truth is, it has proved a great success: she now reads far faster without ever getting stuck; when she speaks to you, she looks you in the eyes and fixes her gaze. Before you always got the feeling she was never really present. Now she can do her homework on her own and is able to concentrate far better in general. She understands everything she is told in class.
In general, the change has been highly positive. Her treatment has worked out really well, and she continues to improve day by day, since she has carried on doing the exercises given by her therapist.
We wish to thank ACOTV (the Catalan Association of Optometry and Visual Therapy) for its ongoing help. We know we can always count on their help in any of the towns and districts within the scope of our project. Without the assistance of the association, it would have been impossible to have had such great success treating Safae.
We currently have 16 cases receiving visual therapy in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona which, without the help of ACOTV, would have been impossible for us to achieve. So, we wish once again to offer our most heartfelt thanks to both the association and to the individual therapists working with us on our “Looking into your Eyes” Project, most particularly, Olga Ballbuena.