A mother from Namibia is urging parents never to allow others to kiss their young children after her toddler son contracted herpes simplex virus in his eye through a kiss — losing his sight and facing the prospect of permanent blindness as a result.
Michelle Saaiman’s son Juwan was just 16 months old when he developed what appeared to be a routine eye infection in August 2024. When antibiotic drops failed to clear it up and his condition worsened, doctors delivered a diagnosis that left his mother stunned — a herpes cold sore had begun growing on the boy’s cornea. As both parents tested negative for the virus, medical staff concluded it had been transmitted through a kiss to or near the eye by an acquaintance.
“The doctor was telling me there’s a fever blister growing in my child’s cornea,” Michelle told Metro. “I was literally looking at the doctor wondering whether it’s April 1, because I thought it was an April Fool’s joke.”
Initial medication proved ineffective, and over the following weeks the virus caused extensive damage. The cornea lost all sensation, Juwan lost his vision entirely, and the brain stopped registering signals from the affected eye. Without that neural connection, the protective gel in the eye evaporated and the eye began to dry out and deteriorate. A four-millimetre hole eventually appeared, leaving Juwan vulnerable to persistent infections. Doctors warned the family he was at risk of losing the eye altogether.
By March 2025, the family were awaiting a complex surgical procedure in South Africa to transfer nerves from Juwan’s leg to his eye socket — a procedure intended to restore the connection between the eye and the brain. If successful, it would make him eligible for a cornea transplant and potentially restore some degree of vision. Whether his sight can ever fully return remains uncertain, and Michelle said the family had “made peace with the fact that he could very well be permanently blind in his left eye.”
Writing on Facebook, the mother-of-three said she felt compelled to warn other parents. “Don’t let anyone kiss your baby,” she wrote. “Such a silly virus caused so much trauma and damage, it’s just not worth it.” While she and her husband were initially consumed by anger toward whoever had passed the virus to their son, Michelle said she had come to accept it was unlikely to have been deliberate. “Kisses come from a place of love,” she said.
A fundraiser was established to help cover the family’s costs as they travelled to South Africa for Juwan’s specialist treatment.
