Holly Gibbs

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I think the sensory nature of what we can do with online technologies, we've done a lot of work to, as we call it, sonify the paintings. And so even if you aren't able to see, just even be able to experience the painting through the sounds that we've been able to do for that, the tools that we're able to create now, they don't replace being in front of the painting. And technology is great, but it's not quite the same as standing in front of that physical object. So we're trying to do different things. So they are different spaces.

It's now become a worldwide story. You've been interviewed at a TED Talk. Your story is now part of this new musical in London. Could you ever have imagined that that was going to happen when you were a 13-year-old? No. At that time when I was building the windmill, I was just thinking that it's going to solve the problem that we are facing at that time.

This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.

I'm Holly Gibbs and in this edition... I could never in a million years have imagined results like this. We were able to get trick-or-treating last October and she was running down the path in the dark shouting, I can see, and we were just in floods of tears. The six-year-old girl who can see again, thanks to a groundbreaking gene therapy treatment. Also on this podcast, the woman in Ethiopia who has given birth to Quinn Tuplets.

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We start with a six-year-old girl who has had a life-changing treatment to restore her sight. Safi Sanford was born with a rare inherited condition and without treatment she could have become blind by adulthood. But thanks to a one-off gene therapy, Safi has had almost all of her vision back. Here's the moment she could see in the dark after the operation, much to the delight of her parents. What else can you see? Curtains and...

Voitko nähdä minun kuvani?

Ja tietysti ensimmäisenä ajattelimme, että olemme todella haasteita siitä, mutta ajattelimme, että kun hän on 18-vuotias, hän voisi korjata sitä. Ja ajattelimme, että aloitamme siitä. Mutta hän olisi aina haastanut nähdä taivaan. Ja luulen, että jos olet hieman naivaa tällaiseen asiaan, jota me olemme, emme ymmärrä, miksi se oli niin.

We were sent to Moorfields in London for some sort of brain scans back in summer 2024. And that's kind of when it all started to really become a lot more serious. She was diagnosed with night blindness. Again, we'd never heard of that as an actual term.

Kun googlaat sitä, löydät jotain melko haastavaa. Kaikki vanhemmat käsittelevät sitä Google-kohdalla. Silloin huomioimme, että hänellä oli retinitis pigmentosa. Silloin aloitimme tunnelemaan, että hän ei ollut todellisessa tilanteessa, vaan hänellä olisi tullut huonoja asioita, joita emme edes ajattelleet ennen. Silloin päädyimme Great Ormond Streetiin ja keskustelimme Robin Hendersonille, että hänellä olisi syötyä 30-vuotiaana.

Joten perhe, perhe ja hänen perheensä, olisi ollut haastavaa. Kyllä, en voi edes kertoa, kuinka meiltä tuli semmoinen panikka, se syvyys, jota sinulla on, että sinä pidetään joka päivä odottamassa hänen päivänä. Miten kertoisit sen?

Tiedän, että hän ei oikeastaan tiedä, että hänellä on tällainen systeemi, joka voisi koskaan pysyä huonosti. Ja ajattelemaan, miten hän jatketaan elämäänsä elämässä. Hän on ainoa lapsi, me emme ole täällä koko ajan. Se oli täysin haastavaa ja haluaisin, että se olisi sinä, eikä hän. Olimme todella helpottuneita, kun olemme oppineet Robista ja oppineet siitä, että olemme yksi erittäin onnistuneista, jotka tapahtuivat olemaan valmiita gene-terapiaan.

Before we hear what happened and the impact on Safi, let's try and understand the gene side of things, the gene therapy side of things. Rob Henderson, it's a pioneering moment, isn't it? It's a pioneering therapy. Yes, it's very exciting. We are lucky to have this as the first and only at the moment ocular gene therapy.

and that allows the retinal cells to start to turn light into an electrical signal much more efficiently. That's incredible. I just love hearing the detail on that. Let's hear what it's like though in real life, Lisa, with Safi. What can she now see and do that she couldn't do before?

She can see pretty much everything now. She's just wandering behind me, you might see her. She was pretty much completely blind in the dark before. We had to rely on torches to just do everyday things like eat a meal, do some colouring, go to a kid's party. It was really, really bad. She couldn't see at all in the dark. We couldn't go trick or treating. Life was really, really hard. She missed out on an awful lot. I could never in a million years have imagined results like this.

We were able to go trick or treating last October and she was running down the path in the dark shouting, I can see. And we were just in floods of tears, the whole family, just thinking, you know, this has actually given our little girl her life back. Honestly, I can't even explain. You wouldn't even know now that she has this condition. She can do absolutely everything. Her peripheral vision is far improved. Her night blindness is so much better. And how's Safi doing now? Because it must just be so exhilarating still.

She does after school clubs now, she's riding her bike, back on swimming lessons and she's just absolutely thriving. Rob, just final word from you if I can. Pretty amazing for you I imagine as well. It's a huge privilege to be able to do this.

Lisa Sanford and Rob Henderson. To Ethiopia next, where a woman has given birth to quintuplets. Yes, five babies after about 12 years of trying. The chance of that happening naturally is about one in 55 million. The 35-year-old mother and her husband say they are overjoyed. Pete Ross has been speaking to our reporter in Nairobi, Richard Kagoi.