Northeast rank high in prevalence of Children Blindness- Ophthalmologists
By Ishaq Hardawa
The Department of Opthalmology Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, Bauchi, in Collaboration with Opthalmological society of Nigeria has commomerate this year’s world sight day with the call on parents to take measures in preventing childhood blindness.
Speaking in a lecture presentation a Registerer with the Department of Opthalmology, ATBUTH, Dr Haruna Shehu Abdu said majority of the causes of childhood blindness are avoidable which include corneal scaring, cause by vitamin A deficiency, measles infection, injuries to eyes, harmful traditional practices among others.
Dr Haruna Shehu Abdu explain further, that some causes of childhood blindness are hereditary which can not be avoided.
He mentioned some of the common symptoms of childhood blindness to include frequent itching, redness, eye discharge, tearing among others.
“The eye is very delicate sense organ because there several parts of the eye that light has to pass through before it is interpreted as an image, so every part of that eye when it’s affected it can cause impairment in vision so an individual can have a deminision vision”
The Opthalmologists explain that in every minutes, a child lost his vision worldwide.
On his part, a Consultant Opthalmologists, Professor Abdul Mahdi said Northeast region has the highest prevalence of childhood blindness due to malnutrition, measles infection.
“The estimate is that, there is at least 1 blind child to every 10,000 people and most of this blindness unfortunately the prevalence of this blindness is highest in our zone in the Northeast, Bauchi is one of the State where we have the highest prevalence of blindness in the country and also by extension the highest prevalence of childhood blindness and the commonest cause of this blindness in a lot of our children is corneal disease, this are diseases that affect the black part of the eye, and this disease are acquired due lack of vitamin A from malnutrition and you know there is very strong association between that and poverty.
So when people are poor they don’t have good food to give to there children as a result of which their immunity is not very strong and when that immunity is not very strong their are more likely to get infection and in this case the commonest infection that course blindness is Measles, so the combination of vitamin A deficiency, measles and malnutrition, this three are the commonest cause of blindness in this part of the world”
He said a lot of pupils are not performaning well in school because, they can not see well and call on parent and teachers to take note take them to hospital.
“This year the theme of world sight day is child eye health and why is this relevance, now this is very relevance today because of many of the changes that are we seeing in our lives as a result of condition we find our self in increasing digitizertion, now if you look at children, a lots of children this days are growing up using tablet and ipads this devices that requires children to stay indoors for prolonged period of time looking at something that is near.
So what happened is that, this children are developing and the only image that you are presenting to them is something that is near, that develop with very good vision for something that is near but the cannot see something that is far because they don’t go out to play, also because they are sitting in one place and not playing they lack the physical development that is needed for the child to grow and matured as a result of this we are having an increase childhood obesity, they will have myopia a condition they can not see far, no matter what you do they can not see very well this is a condition called angloyopia”
Professor Abdul Mahdi express dismay on the attitude of some Islamiya school teachers who in the cause of punishing their students injured them in their eyes.
In a remark, the Head of Opthalmology Department ATBUTH Dr Shahir Umar said they will conduct an eye screening to Sa’adu Zungur Primary School pupils and provide one hundred eye glasses to those in need, as well as 60 medical glasses to their teachers.
The theme of this year is Prioritise Child Eye Health.
