Nombuso Mqwathi is a talkative matric student who has problems with her eyesight.

‘€œI can’€™t see the board in class properly. It’€™s been quite a long time now, so today I have come for my eyes to be

checked,’€ says the 18-year-old, while waiting her turn in the eye clinic queue at Greytown Hospital.

‘€œNot too bad,’€ says Benita Singh, the optometrist, after checking Mqwathi’€™s eyes.

She prescribes a minimal pair of glasses, and advises the girl to only wear them while studying.

Mqwathi’€™s cheeks dimple and she goes to the next queue where Thokozani Sibisi shows her an array of glasses that range in price from R160 to R450.

She chooses a pair with oval glasses and promises to deposit the money over a three-month period.

Five children from the local orphanage, Kinder Huis, loll about on the plastic chairs, happy to be missing school.

Nine-year-old Coleen Olivier has already been wearing glasses for two years but says she needs a new pair because her current ones are ‘€œall skew’€.

But most of the 40 patients waiting on the hard chairs are elderly people who can no longer see as they used to.

Singh whips through the queue, identifying those who need cataract operations ‘€“ almost a third of the patients. These go into a separate queue and the clerk, Mzandile Khoza, writes them referral letters to either Dundee or Edendale Hospitals for an operation to remove the cataracts.

Although Singh lives in Durban, she runs regular optometry clinics at a number of out-of-the way hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal ‘€“ thanks to the SA Red Cross Air Mercy Service (AMS).

Getting to Greytown on the AMS nine-seater aeroplane took a mere 25-minutes from Durban, enabling Singh and Sibisi to see an average of 45 patients in a single day before heading home.

The AMS, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, flies doctors and other health professionals to rural hospitals in both KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape a couple of times a week.

The professionals, either in private practice or working at urban government hospitals, offer their services free of charge to communities where specialists are rare.

The service most in demand is optometry, and over 85 000 patients have been helped at eye clinics facilitated by AMS since the service started.

Dental, orthopaedic, psychiatric and paediatric services are also in great demand.

Singh, who has been a volunteer for the past six months, says that the work is ‘€œtiring but rewarding, especially when you help someone to see their grandchildren properly or be able to read again’€.

About 50 000 patients a year are helped by the AMS outreach programme, which is partly sponsored by the provincial health departments.

Aside from flying doctors into rural areas, the AMS planes also airlift patients to other hospitals if they need more specialised care.

This month, AMS has launched a fundraising drive to help sustain its services and is appealing to the public to buy its ‘€œGive them Wings’€ badges for R10 at Ackermans stores countrywide.