This year’s World Sight Day (WSD) was commemorated last Thursday, October 13. The occasion was observed worldwide with the theme: “Eye care for all”, which implies that all humans without exception all over the globe need to care for their eyes to ensure good eyesight for all. A special day was devoted to it to stress the importance of the eyes to the body.
In Nigeria, the Day passed by like any other day as many were unaware of the occasion. The Word Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva on October 10, 2002 started the WSD, and held that it should be celebrated as an annual day of awareness to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment on the second Thursday of October each year.
The occasion ought to be a very important day considering the rate of visual impairment in the world and to generate public enlightenment and awareness that should constitute a strong tool for eradicating avoidable visual impairment and blindness.
According to a recent report by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, 285 million people in the world are visually impaired. The report further states that 80 per cent of these cases could be avoided if people were to receive comprehensive eye care services.
The report laments: “It’s estimated that 90% of blind people live in low-income countries, yet 80% of blindness is preventable or avoidable with treatment”.
More alarming and disturbing is the revelation that while one child goes blind every minute, one adult goes blind every five seconds. The report aggregated that over seven million people slip into blindness every year. This is indicative of the magnitude of avoidable blindness which has become a case of lack of awareness that made a bad situation worse.
We note with dismay the abysmal attention paid to the care of the eye the world over but the situation is worse in poor countries. And health experts have admonished that until proper attention is given to preserving eyesight, the eye will continue to be at risk. They stressed that caring for the eye can be achieved at a little cost.
Interestingly, they identified that caring for the eye can lift people out of poverty, because they can contribute fully to their families, communities and their countries.
Speaking recently on the importance of eye care, the Director-General of the WHO, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, observed, “Eye care needs to be a priority; it is not just an issue for health ministers”.
If given the support of private institutions and individuals, government at all levels can record a major breakthrough in improving the health conditions of millions of visually challenged persons. However, the governments should lead by ensuring that there is increased access to health care services in relation to both prevention and treatment of eye conditions.
As a matter of fact, providing access to eye care, which reduces the incidence of avoidable blindness, is part of the obligations of the government under the right of the citizens to the highest attainable standard of health.
Regrettably, the public health facilities have collapsed in Nigeria to the extent that the erstwhile Buhari military regime noted that the public hospitals were mere consulting rooms that did not deserve to be called health institutions. Many years after the indictment, it is arguable if anything has changed significantly in the health sector because evidence abound that successive governments have not been committed to improving the sector in line with the WHO recommendation of provision of access to health care services before 2020.
It is, therefore, against this backdrop that we express in strong terms our disappointment with the role of the government at all levels in sensitising the public on the occasion. For, aside from the social media platforms through which some concerned individuals drew attention to the event by posting #EyeCareForAll, the government played an insignificant role in this regard.
In the light of this, Blueprint urges the government to live up to its obligation because it has a major role to play in creating and sustaining awareness on eye care as well as pulling many people away from hugging avoidable darkness as a way of life.
