Ophthalmologists Charged On Better Eye Care Services

President, African Ophthalmology Forum, Dr. Kunle Hassan, has challenged African eye doctors to tap into the viable economic climate of African market for eye care by establishing eye hospitals able to care for eye needs of Africans.

Dr. Hassan speaking at the meeting of the African Ophthalmology Forum in Berlin, Germany, stated that this would ensure that modern and up-to-date eye care hospitals are available and eye doctors could tap into the 20 billion dollars out-of pocket spending on eye care currently in the continent.

According to Dr. Hassan, “many ophthalmologists own personal eye hospitals, but in other parts of the world, what you have are eye doctors coming together to build eye institutions. That is business and it is the norm with other professions.”

Dr. Hassan said through such drives for resources mobilisation and utilisation, eye doctors in the continent could easily lobby industry for support of ophthalmology practice in sub-Saharan Africa.

Meanwhile, he urged for a review of the length of training of eye doctors in Africa. According to him,” the length of training for eye doctors in African is too long; we need to close the gap. African colleges of medicine must create more platforms to train eye doctors to meet the continent’s need.”

Dr. Hassan urged eye doctors to pass on the wonders of vision to make the Vision 20:2020 goal of reducing blindness from preventable causes a reality in Africa.

Earlier at the conference,  Dr. Kunle Hassan said African governments needed to  re-assess funding for training eye  of doctors with a view to ensuring sustainability of such training and further reduction of blind cases in the continent.

He declared that Africa had reached a critical stage that it must awake to the responsibility of ensuring that eye care was enhanced and assessable to all.

Dr. Hassan said African governments must marry technology and eye needs and based on that prevent duplication of efforts by different donor agencies that end up leaving unattended to other important things, which if supported, would have ensure better sight for Africans.

The former Chief Medical Director of National Eye Centre, Kaduna, Professor Adenike Abiose, declared that blindness had remained a problem  that  African leaders had not much consideration for because it does not kill like malaria, tuberculosis and HIV, whereas it continued to contribute significantly to lose in economy.

Professor Abiose, emphasising the need for policy makers to rise up to supporting reduction of blind cases in the community, stated the need for proper integration of eye care into the health system and community participation engagement in getting eye care available at the grassroots.

According to her, “ophthalmology should not be seen only as a professional group to prevent blindness alone but as part of other health issues.”

Meanwhile at the scientific session, experts identified challenges before eye care in Africa to include wrong prescription of eye glasses, monitoring of outcomes of cataract surgery and poor services for low vision service.