World Sight Day:october |11 October 2013

Seychelles focuses on preventing avoidable blindness

Maternal and child health and school health nurses yesterday received new information to refresh their knowledge on vision screening for school children from crèche onwards to detect sight problem at an early stage.

This was during a workshop organised by the ophthalmology unit in the Ministry of Health as part of activities to mark World Sight Day yesterday.

The opening of the workshop at Sheikh Khalifa conference centre at the Seychelles Hospital was attended by Health Minister Mitcy Larue, principal secretary Peggy Vidot, World Health Organisation liaison officer Dr Cornelia Atsyor among other health specialists and health personnel.

The international theme for this year is ‘Get your eyes tested’ but the ophthalmology unit held the workshop on Vision 2020’s theme – The Right to Sight’.

Roland Barbé, the acting Vision 2020 national chapter coordinator, said the ophthalmology unit has left the testing campaign to the private sector, something which Vision Care did for free while the unit concentrated on the awareness-raising aspect.

“The Health Ministry welcomes this initiative on the part of the private sector,” said Dr Barbé in remarks to launch the workshop.

Vision 2020 is an international programme and all United Nations (UN) member countries have been encouraged to adopt the programme which was initiated by the WHO in collaboration with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), the umbrella organisation for non-governmental organisations (NGO), the private sector and other stakeholders and individuals under which they work together to prevent avoidable blindness with a deadline set in 2020.

Dr Barbé stressed that this Vision 2020 focuses on the development of the ophthalmology  programme and has no link with the National Expo Vision 2020 organised here a couple of years ago focusing on the development of Seychelles.

But how will Vision 2020 tackle the problem of world blindness?
This will be through cross-sector collaboration – health ministries working together with the private sector and NGOs to establish a national eye care programme aimed at developing, planning and carrying out an equitable and sustainable eye care programme, integrate the programme into the national health care programmes and in the case of Seychelles integrate it in the primary health care which is at present not the case.

The programme focuses on disease control, develops human resources which is a challenge here as well as proper infrastructure and technology which go with it, raise public awareness on the causes of avoidable blindness.

Meanwhile, Dr Barbé explained that here among the greatest challenges are statistics which are not readily available as no national survey in the causes of blindness has yet been conducted.
 
He pointed out that through a survey conducted in the recent past by the unit for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases it was revealed that from 6,000 people were diagnosed with diabetics, 2,000 come for routine eye checks while 300 people are on the waiting list to have a cataract operation.

He also said that there are 14 children who are blind while other statistics on blindness are not available.

Dr Barbé explained that for the first time in 2011 Seychelles produced a five-year strategic plan and admitted that it is a challenge to carry it out.

“Today’s initiative is among the steps in the right direction to carry out the programme,” he said.