By Auwal Mohammed
Gombe (Nigeria) – Acting National Chairman, Nigeria Ophthalmic Nurses Association (NONA), Mr Stephen Lamiya, has decried the state of health facilities in the country, including training institutions for health professional, especially nursing, saying they are lacking both human and material recourses, as compared to the world standard.
Lamiya, said this in Gombe, northeast Nigeria at the opening of 31st NONA’s annual National Scientific Conference, Free Eye Care service outreach and Delegate Conference, tagged, “Vision 2020, The Journey So Far”, adding that Nigeria has less than 2,000 ophthalmic Nurses, which is grossly inadequate, considering the nation’s population.
He called on government at the states and federal level to improve on the standard of training for ophthalmic nurses and training more nurses in other specialists group to tackle the challenges of providing standard eye health services.
Lamiya, expressed the displeasure of the association on deployment of ophthalmic nurses to areas outside their field of speciality, asking “the authorities concerned to refrain from this ignoble act that can destroy the zeal of specialisation in nursing”.
Presenting the keynote address, Musa Goyol said about 285 million people around the world suffer from vision impairment, 39 million of this population are completely blind and the remaining have some degree of vision impairment from moderate to severe.
He said that the causes of blindness in Nigeria according to 2007 National Blindness Survey, cataract 45.3%, Glaucoma 16.7%, Corneal scarring from all causes 7.9% and uncorrected refractive errors 57.1%.
“It is estimated that 1,130,000 individuals aged 40 years are currently blind in Nigeria, and the prevalence of blindness in people of all ages was estimated to be 0.78%. The North West geo-politica lzone (GPZ) has the largest number of blind adults (28.6%) while South West has 2.8%.
“84% of blindness is due to avoidable causes, cataract stands out as the first priority amongst the major causes of blindness, with an estimated present backlog of 16-20 million unoperated cases. The number of cataract operations/million population/per year is a useful measure of the delivery of eye care in different settings; this demonstrates great differences, as follows,” Goyal said.
