Adults advised to go for eye tests

ADULTS who are 40 years and above are advised to go for eye test at least once every year to prevent the incidence of blindness or low vision.
Those with close relations who suffer from glaucoma should test their eyes every six months for early detection and management of the disease since they are four times at risk of getting the disease compared to others.
Glaucoma is a silent disease of the eye which affects the optic nerve, eventually leading to blindness if not managed, hence it is now called “the silent thief of sight”.
The advice to go for regular eye tests was given by the Head of the Eye Care Unit of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Oscar Ofori Debrah, at a media interaction programme in Accra, organised as part of the World Sight Day (WSD) commemoration which falls on October 14, this year.
The World Sight Day (WSD), is an annual event focusing on the problem of global blindness. Held on the second Thursday of October, each year, the event aims at raising public awareness around the world about the prevention and treatment of loss of sight and low vision.
According to Dr Debrah, Ghana had an estimated 220 blind people and named the major causes of blindness and low vision in the country as cataract reactive errors, which accounted for 50 per cent of the problem; glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, sickle cell retinopathy, 20 per cent; trachoma, vitamin A deficiency, onchocerciasis 15 per cent; and other causes, 15 per cent.
The eye specialist said lack of human resource and infrastructure affected eye care delivery in the country, adding that it was important for people to go for tests before they developed complications which might be difficult to handle.
He said, presently, the country had only 54 eye specialists and about 300 eye nurses to care for the population of about 24 million people.
He explained that last year for example, only 14,000 cataract operations were carried out instead of about 46,000 cases which needed attention.
He said cataract was considered one of the causes of blindness globally, accounting between 40 to 50 per cent of all blindness, adding that the single most important risk factor was age which explained why almost all people above the age of 70 years had some degree of cataract.
“However, cataract surgery is one of the cost effective health care interventions”, he pointed out.
Gloabally, approximately 314 million people world-wide live with low vision and blindness. Of these, 45 million people are blind and 269 million have low vision, 145 million people have low vision due to uncorrected refractive errors (near-sightedness, far-sightedness or astigmatism). In most of these cases, normal vision could be restored with eyeglasses.
Women face a significantly greater risk of vision loss than men — two-thirds of blind people world-wide are women and girls.
On Thursday, October 14, Ghana will join the rest of the world to commemorate the event under a global theme: “Countdown to 2020 and with a local sub-theme: Countdown to 2020-How Far Have We Come?” The venue for the celebration is Wa, the capital of the Upper West Region.