FG plans integrating eye care in primary health centres

The federal government has disclosed that plans are underway to integrate primary eye care services in primary healthcare centres across Nigeria.

National Coordinator, National Eye Health Programme, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr. Oteri Okolo, who revealed the plan, said the intention is to provide opportunity for rural dwellers to access eye care services and quit harmful self-medication practices whenever they have eye problems.

She spoke during the national close-out and final dissemination meeting on child eye health organized by Seeing is Believing (SiB), in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health, Standard Chartered and the Christian Blind Mission (CBM) International.

While stressing that easy access to eye care services is key to reducing avoidable blindness in adults and children, especially in under-served areas, she said that the national council on health has endorsed the plan and given approval for work to commence on its implementation.

‘’The implementation guidelines which have been unveiled today will soon be ready and it will start with the training of primary healthcare workers on how best to administer primary eye care services to patients at rural communities.

‘’As part of the programme, we developed various documents that we can see unveiled today; we develop the school eye health and guidelines to be able to guide eye care services in schools and the primary eye care manual to be able to ensure training of primary eye care workers at the family level.

‘’What we intend to do as a ministry is to ensure that we are able to bring eye care closer to the people because you know that very often, distance is one of the barriers  for people accessing eye care, especially in the rural areas.

‘’This document is aimed at equipping primary health care workers with the relevant skills to deliver primary eye care to the community closest to the people.

‘’This is because for us as a government, it is important to ensure that intervention are sustainable in the long run. So, we want to ensure that eye care is properly integrated all over the country so that Nigerians can benefit,’’ Dr. Okolo said.

Earlier, Country Director, CBM International Nigeria, Bright Ekweremadu called on the federal government to ensure that primary eye care services in primary healthcare centres is integrated across the country.

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While commending theinitiators of the project, he added that they were able to surpass the 1.5million children target in 11 states.  

‘’The project was originally designed to work in 11 states and so we worked in 11 states. It was not a national program. Therefore, we were able to reach the 11 states.

‘’It is obvious and very important for eye health to be integrated. Integration is very important and that is what we should be looking at, but unfortunately in Nigeria, we are very good in running our projects and programmes shallow, which is not good enough.

‘’There are so many ways we can integrate child health and eye issues. We have a number of them. Maternal and child health programme ongoing in Nigeria; why shouldn’t we include a comprehensive eye health into this project? That is the question I’m asking.

‘’This project is a big eye opener not only to the government of Nigeria, but even to the donor communities to begin to find ways to integrate eye health into all maternal and child projects in Nigeria. With that, we will obviously make progress,’’ he added.