Stanchart launches $1.25m eye care project

Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), in partnership with Operation Eyesight Universal, a development organisation dedicated to the treatment and prevention of blindness in the developing world, has launched a $1.25m eye care project and inaugurated a newly constructed eye care unit built  at a cost of $46,000 for the Ga South Municipal Hospital in Accra.

The eye care project which is aimed at improving eye care in all the 10 regions across the country is on the theme: “Quality Eye Health For All”.

The launch of the project also commences Phase 5 of the bank’s “Seeing is Believing” initiative which seeks to improve eye health of Ghanaians by integrating it into the primary health care programme of the Ministry of Health and is expected to run from now and end in 2017.

The Minister of Health, Ms Sherry Ayittey, who launched the project and also opened the new eye care unit, said research indicated that over the past 30 years, blindness had steadily increased and become a public health issue demanding that new strategies were evolved to control the disease.

She said the risk of blindness increased significantly with poverty and old age, especially in women, and was also quite common in certain work settings such as in factories, which required that people periodically go for eye checks.

She said the Ministry of Health (MOH) under the circumstance, was strengthening health institutions and liaising with the Factories Inspectorate Division of the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations to enforce standards and ensure that people’s eye health was improved.

“Industry players need to provide employees with the necessary and requisite protective and safety gears that prevent them against occupational hazards, particularly those gadgets that shield their eyes to prevent them from blindness,” She said.

Ms Ayittey commended the SCB and Operation Eyesight Universal for their contribution towards eye health in the country. She said the MOH was determined to revitalise the public health system, especially to favour those in the rural areas.

She appealed to authorities of the Ga South Municipal Hospital to plough back profits they made from the services they provided at the eye unit into improving the state of equipment and building.

Under  the phase 4 of the Bank’s “Seeing is Believing” programme which was begun in 2011, SCB and Operation Eyesight Universal in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service supported 21 selected eye care facilities in six regional hospitals including ones in the Central, Greater Accra, Ashanti, Volta, Northern and Upper East.

The programme covered infrastructure development, provision of equipment, human resource development, awareness creation and eye care services. Phase five is expected to cover 35 districts and will focus on human resource development and awareness creation.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SCB, Mr Kweku Bedu Addo, said it was expected that the phase 5 project would impact about 7.5 million people between now and the completion date.

“As a bank, we are committed to balancing ambition and the pursuit of excellence in how we do business. We like to think of ourselves as doing business with a conscience, standing beside our communities and not above them,” he said.

Dr Boateng  Wiafe, Regional Director for Africa, Operation Eyesight Universal expressed gratitude to donors through whose benevolence the organisation was able to work with its partners in the developing world to help them build capacity to the point where they could sustain their own high quality, comprehensive eye care and community development activities.

“In addition, we have been increasingly involved in providing water, sanitation and health and hygiene education in order to address trachoma, a leading cause of blindness in Africa,” he said

The Medical Officer in Charge of the Ga South Municipal Hospital, Dr Matilda Agyemang, said the newly constructed eye care unit had come as a big relief to the hospital, because earlier the hospital ophthalmologist had been working under a tree.

She promised that the hospital authorities would take good care of the building and facilities provided.

By Jojo Sam/Daily Graphic/Ghana