The Copenhagen story I need to tell
It seems to me that one of the activities that should be marked on the national calendar for March, but which is overlooked by the calendar planners is ‘Glaucoma Week’; maybe because its importance is not appreciated by those in charge of such decisions.
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Glaucoma is an eye disease which can result in permanent blindness if not treated early. Anybody can become a victim, obviously including those who decide which observances should be highlighted on calendars and in institutional diaries.
Therefore, evidently the campaign to beat glaucoma is everybody’s fight.
Glaucoma Day is marked worldwide on March 12; and it is preceded, also globally, by Glaucoma Week.
Shockingly, in 2015, Ghana was reportedly the world leader in the number of glaucoma cases.
Glaucoma is all the more frightening because it steals sight without pain or other warning. Eye screening or testing is crucial so that treatment can begin immediately after diagnosis.
Glaucoma Day coming just one week after Ghana’s Independence Day, my thinking is that free eye testing could even be made part of the Independence Day activities.
This year’s theme for the Week, as in previous years, was crafted to underscore the importance of screening in the ‘stop glaucoma’ offensive: ‘Beat Invisible Glaucoma’; with the sub-theme, ‘screen First Degree Relatives (FDRs)’.
According to the President of the Glaucoma Association of Ghana (GAG), Harrison Abutiate, an estimated 700,000 Ghanaians have the disease. Of that number, 60,000 have already gone blind; and the number is rising. It also runs in families, hence the 2017 FDR sub-theme. “The FDRs refers to immediate family and siblings.”
But as alarming as the above statistics are, they are only 2015 estimates; current data is not yet available. Thus the present number of victims could be higher.
As Mr Abutiate explained to me earlier this week, “we are surely not reaching everybody as we want. These surveys are estimates and maybe the real figure would have been as high as one million living with glaucoma.”
Therefore, public education needs to be sustained, he stressed at the launch of Glaucoma Week earlier this month.
However, he is optimistic that the education is spreading: “It could be worse by now but we believe that the awareness campaign may be reducing the numbers losing their sight due to treatment.”
Given the devastating nature of blindness, its impact on the individual, family and, ultimately the nation, why should this situation be allowed to continue when there are weapons against glaucoma: education and screening followed by treatment? Millions of Ghanaians may have glaucoma but they don’t know it!
It goes without saying that subsidised or free eye testing is crucial in the fight because early commencement of treatment is what saves sight.
And I should know. I can well appreciate warnings about ‘silent’ and ‘invisible’ whenever advice is given about testing, as I have first-hand experience of the stealthy nature of the condition.
Had it not been for sheer luck I shudder to think what would have happened to me.
This is why I feel that every year I need to tell my glaucoma story, my ‘Copenhagen story’, to testify that indeed glaucoma develops without warning.
My luck was that in 1980, while based in Paris, France, I had been on a reporting assignment in Copenhagen, Denmark, when I happened to see an unusual invitation in a shop window.
Earlier that morning, not wanting to risk being late for an interview appointment near a shopping mall, I had set off from my hotel early. However, on arrival at the address, I realised that I had about an hour to kill because it was closer to my hotel than I had thought.
It was while I was walking about to keep warm and at the same time window-shopping to while away the time, that I saw in an optician’s shop window a sign in English “Come in for a free eye test!”
Could it be true? I went in to find out. Soon I found myself seated in front of a very friendly optician. Fortunately she spoke good English and also assured me that the test was truly gratis.
After the test, she told me that there was “a problem” and so I should have my eyes checked again on my return to France. Another test in Paris confirmed what she had told me; there was indeed a disturbing development: I had glaucoma.
Notably, previously I had not felt any pain to alert me that my eyesight was under serious threat. This is why eye specialists call glaucoma the “silent thief of sight”.
I remain eternally grateful to the optician in Copenhagen and her company for their free eye testing service. Without the test at that time, it could so easily have been a different, tragic story.
What if I had not been in Europe at that time? What if I had not seen the notice in the shop window? And what if it had been in Danish, not English?
The main strategies to combat this most terrible, invisible enemy have been identified, so the government must play its part to save potential victims.
Mr Abutiate put it diplomatically: “The GAG needs more financial and material support, including volunteers, to reach many more people,”
Why can’t the Government and partners fund free eye screening nationwide, maybe through the National Health Insurance Scheme?
Another area of support the Government could consider is reducing the duties on glaucoma medication to reduce the cost because they are very, very expensive. Moreover, once diagnosed treatment is lifelong.
Also, I don’t think the GAG should continue to shoulder most of the public education burden, as seems to be the case. The Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service should have a more frontal, sustained role.
On my part, if by telling my Copenhagen story yet again I can get even one person, or a new reader of this column, to go for an eye test before it is too late for them, it would have been well worth the risk of boring the regular readers.
Readers, get your eyes tested! And on this last day of March, glaucoma awareness month, I urge you to please pass on the message.