Windhoek (Namibia) - Giving a kiss to a newborn baby is nothing reprehensible for many and no one would think that this gesture could harm the child. But this very act of love proved fatal for little Juwan (2) , who has been almost blind in one eye ever since.

Michelle Saaimen regularly shares pictures and videos of her family of five on Facebook . Even a quick glance reveals that there is something wrong with the youngest member of the family. Unlike his right eye, the pupil of his left eye is not brown, but poisonous green, and the sclera (the actually white part of the eyeball) is not white, but red - the eye is severely inflamed!

Michelle writes that her son, who was around 16 months old at the time, had an initially harmless-looking eye infection about six months ago. The doctor prescribed conventional antibiotics to combat the supposedly bacterial infection, but the medication did not work.

Mom Michelle reports that she and her husband Neels watched as something seemed to "grow" in Juwan's eye. The family were also shocked to discover that Juwan was gradually losing feeling in the inflamed eye, so he started scratching the organ of vision with his finger without even twitching.

Shortly afterwards, a specialist diagnosed the then one-year-old boy with an advanced herpes infection in his eye, which had most likely entered his body through a kiss on or near the affected eye.

Thanks to the collaboration of many doctors and experts around the world, at least a remission of the viral disease has been achieved. This means that the symptoms have been temporarily alleviated, but the disease itself is still present.

The worst thing is that if the virus remains untreated, Juwan will not only become permanently blind in his left eye, but the virus may travel further into his brain and cause permanent damage or even kill the 2-year-old.

The medical treatment of her son not only costs Michelle a lot of time, but also a lot of money, as she has to fly around the world with him to various doctors.

In order to be able to continue paying for his treatment, she has launched a fundraising appeal on the"BackaBuddy" website to raise money for a cornea transplant for Juwan.

Such a transplant could be the only way to give the little boy a "normal" life with two healthy eyes.