Optometric Association worried about quacks
The Ghana Optometric Association says there is an infiltration of quacks in optometric practice in the country which poses a serious threat for eye health in the country.
Advertisement
The association has therefore called for the enactment of legislation and enforcement of existing regulations to get rid of the quacks.
This was contained in a communiqué signed at the joint African Council of Optometry and Ghana Optometric Association 11th annual general meeting (AGM) at Ho in the Volta Region.
The theme for the AGM was: “Expanding Optometric Practice In Africa: Focus On Scope.
Training And Legislation”.
The AGM brought together optometrists from most parts of Africa including Nigeria, Togo, Cote D’Ivoire, Botswana, Djibouti, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ghana.
The association said those observations and others needed urgent attention by the government in order to provide improved eye care service delivery to the population.
It added that the current architecture of the Allied Health Professions Council which regulated over 22 health professions did not augur well for effective regulation of the profession of optometry in the country and the association therefore implored on the government to initiate the establishment of a separate Optometric Council in the country.
In the communiqué, the association observed that a significant number of trained optometrists in the country have left the country for greener pastures due to poor working conditions and non-posting by government after school and it therefore expected that the ongoing job evaluation would lead to improved conditions of service for optometrists in the country.
It said it also expected the government to post the many trained optometrists who have completed their mandatory one-year internship to serve the many communities without eye care personnel, adding that they should be done to ensure that Ghana met the 2030 targets on effective coverage for eye care.
Specialist optometric training
It also called for an urgent need for an expanded scope of optometric practice in alignment with international best practices to meet evolving eye care needs in Ghana, and therefore invited government’s partnership to establish an Optometric College to offer specialist (residency) optometric training in low vision, pediatrics, contact lenses, binocular vision, ocular diseases, neuro-optometry, glaucoma, among others to offer improved eye care services to the population.
The communiqué which was signed by the National President and National Secretary, Prof. Dr Samuel Bert Boadi-Kusi and Dr Yaw Osei Akoto respectively, said there were currently very limited opportunities of study leave for optometrists in the public sector to pursue further studies and therefore called on the Ghana Health Services (GHS) to allocate enough quota of study leave slots to optometrists to pursue further studies.
It also called on the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) to consider spectacle lenses as medical supplies to ensure that only quality lenses were imported into the country.