Take good care of your eyes - Dr Boateng advises Ghanaians
The Deputy Ashanti Regional Director of Health Service incharge of Clinical Care, Dr Fred Adomako Boateng, has advised Ghanaians to take good care of their eyes and go for regular eye check-up.
He explained that the fact that one could see should not make that person assume that he/she had no eye challenge, adding that there was the need for everyone to occasionally go for eye check-up for the early detection and management of any challenge with the eye.
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Dr Boateng, who announced this at a one-day eye care sensitisation workshop organised by the Ashanti Regional Health Directorate in Kumasi, therefore, appealed to the media to use their platform to help increase awareness creation among community members, women, men, caregivers and girls and boys to understand the importance of eye care and also direct them to where to seek help when necessary.
The sensitisation workshop attended by media personnel from selected media houses in the Ashanti Region was aimed at sensitising the journalists to the relevance of eye care, challenges related to eye care in the region, and what was being done to bring eye care closer to the entire populace irrespective of their location in the region.
Collaboration
Dr Boateng announced that the Regional Health Directorate in 2014 signed an agreement with Orbis International Africa, a non-profit organisation that works in sub-Saharan Africa, to reduce preventable and treatable blindness and visual impairment in the region.
He stated that the objectives of the project, which was being piloted in the Afigya Kwabre, Atwima Kwanwoma, Bosomtwe and Ejisu municipalities, included the development of and the strengthening of the capacity of the district hospitals to appropriately treat eye diseases and refer cases in the advanced stage to tertiary health facilities.
It also seeks to develop and strengthen the capacity of community health nurses to treat, identify and appropriately refer patients, especially children with health conditions to the hospitals, and also develop and strengthen the capacity of the School Health Education Programme (SHEP).
The deputy director hinted that the project would be replicated in the rest of the region after successful completion in 2019 based on the results that would come out.
He said to enhance the development of the project, 20 queen mothers in the pilot districts had been trained to raise awareness in communities, adding that 90 SHEP coordinators had also been trained to conduct visual tests and school screening, as well as the training of 130 Community Health Officers (CHOs) who were trained in primary eye health to screen, diagnose, treat and refer patients with eye conditions.
