My Copenhagen story (Thoughts of a Native Daughter)
Minister of Health Alex Segbefia had extremely encouraging words for the ‘stop glaucoma’ campaign recently, during the launch of the 2016 Glaucoma Week.
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The Ghana News Agency reported Mr Segbefia as saying: “The Ministry pledges to accord eye health activities their rightful place in government’s health policies, provide leadership and invest adequate resources to ensure increased access to quality eye health service.
“We shall continue to support human resource development by training and retraining of personnel and also ensure that those deployed are well motivated.”
Other accounts quoted him as adding that the government was considering providing glaucoma medication under the National Health Insurance.
Mr Segbefia urged eye clinics to offer free sight screening during the observance so that glaucoma and other eye diseases can be detected early.
The Week, March 6 to 12, included a free screening session for the public in line with the Ministry’s policy of early detection and prevention of glaucoma, which can result in incurable blindness. This year the observance was marked under the theme, ‘Beat Invisible Glaucoma (or ‘B-I-G’).
During the annual observance, people are reminded that glaucoma is all the more frightening because it steals sight without warning. Moreover, anybody can become a victim. World Glaucoma Day itself is observed on March 12.
Last year, the alarming news was that Ghana leads the world in glaucoma cases. Memorably, as part of the 2015 event, a local name in Akan for the disease was introduced: Hinta anifraye, (meaning hidden or secret blindness).
Mr. Harrison Abutiate, president of the Glaucoma Association of Ghana (GAG), explained that it was found necessary to coin a more patient-friendly name which people could remember more easily than ‘glaucoma’.
However, even with those who have done the test and been made aware that they have glaucoma, most of the drugs are very expensive so it’s not everybody who can afford them.
At this year’s event, the GAG reiterated its annual call for a reduction of the duties paid on glaucoma medication and equipment.
The tax on glaucoma drugs and equipment is about 53 per cent, which prices treatment out of the reach of many sufferers.
The association also stressed the importance of free screening and training of more eye care staff.
An estimated 700,000 Ghanaians have the disease. It is known that as many as 250,000 don’t even know that they have glaucoma. Of that number, 60,000 have already gone blind; and the number is rising. It also runs in families. Therefore, public education needs to be sustained.
I can well appreciate warnings about ‘silent’ and ‘invisible’ whenever advice is given about testing, as I have first-hand experience of the stealth nature of the condition.
Although I may be boring those who may have read an account of my glaucoma story in this space before, I feel that it’s important to narrate it again, to emphasise that it really attacks without notification.
My luck was that in April, 1980, while based in Paris, France, I was on a reporting assignment in Copenhagen, Denmark, when I happened to see an unusual invitation in a shop window.
That morning, not wanting to risk being late for an interview appointment, 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 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? A ‘freebie’ in Europe? I went in to find out. Soon I found myself seated in front of a very friendly optician. 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, incredibly, previously I had not felt any pain to alert me that my eyesight was under serious threat.
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 story.
What if I had not been in Europe at that time? What if I had not seen the notice? And what if the notice had been in Danish, not English?
At this year’s observance too, significantly, all the dismal statistics and the critical support requested were virtually the same as those the GAG requested in 2015 and previous years.
Topping the world glaucoma league table is a position Ghana has to reverse! The strategies to combat this most terrible, invisible enemy have been identified, so the government must play its part to save potential victims.
As Mr Segbefia was appointed last year May, this was his maiden Glaucoma Week. He may have been expressing genuine concerns about the condition, but, critically, will he be able to translate his empathy into ACTION?
Or will Glaucoma Week next year be marked with the same assurances from the sector ministry and the same requests from the GAG?
On my part, if by telling my Copenhagen story yet again I can get even one person to go for an eye test before it’s too late for them, it would have been well worth the effort – and never mind the risk of boring regular readers of this column who by now know my Copenhagen story very well.
Adjoa Yeboah-Afari's 'Thoughts of a Native Daughter' column appears in The Mirror every Friday.
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