‘He gives you hope. He is amazing’

Rhiannon Willis was 8 and had already gone blind in one eye when she had her first appointment with Professor Peng Tee Khaw
Professor Peng Tee Khaw and Rhiannon Willis, photographed at Moorfields Eye Hospital
Professor Peng Tee Khaw and Rhiannon Willis, photographed at Moorfields Eye Hospital
ROBERT WILSON

Rhiannon Willis was eight years old, and on the verge of going blind, when she met Professor Peng Tee Khaw at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. “As a child, things are black or white,” she remembers. “It’s, ‘I like you or I don’t like you,’ and with some doctors, you take a while to make up your mind. With Professor Khaw it was very clear. I thought, ‘I like you. You know what you’re doing and I trust you.’ ”

Willis, now 20, was diagnosed at the age of 2 with uveitis – inflammation of the eye – and, in spite of a series of operations, had gone blind in her left eye. Khaw’s job was to save the sight in her right one, which