The Assistant Commissioner for Community Health in charge of disability and rehabilitation in the Ministry of Health, Dr Moses Muwanga, has said the government is set to train teachers on eye care to enable them identify eye defects amongst students and refer them to medical institutions for proper eye care.
‘We have established interventions at school levels in the community programme, we have established visual reading corridors where we place some letters on the wall so every child can stand across that reading corridor and can estimate whether he has a problem’ he said.
He added, ‘Every child would stand in that corridor close his eye and look at it, if he cannot read then he goes to the teacher and then a referral system happens.. we go to these schools and find out how many children have that problem, then these children are referred in our health structures right here from health center three up to the regional level’.
Dr Muwanga made the remarks during the opening of the cross country child eye health workshop between Mozambique, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and Uganda in Entebbe on Monday to map out a five year eye health strategy which will run in Uganda and five other sub Saharan countries.
‘Not everybody who has a problem with the eye may have a refractive problem. It might be an infection which can be locally treated there and then they are referred up’ he said.
Dr Muwanga said the ministry is seeking to have a roadmap of screening people and after referring them for treatment in order to reduce on the eye care burden in Uganda where every three out of 10 people have eye problems.
‘It even becomes worse in some areas where you find that five in ten people have a problem of eye care so as a country we are trying to find out the prevalence of people who have an eye problem’ he said.
The Director for Light for the World (LFW) Uganda Mr Silvester Kasozi said there is need for integrated eye health and economic empowerment to contribute to social inclusion across the country.
‘Most of our development as individuals is through the eye, that is almost 80 percent, once you don’t have proper eyesight, that is definitely curtailed, and that is not to say that those who are visually impaired cannot thrive. They can thrive, but compared to those who actually have proper vision, they are definitely way much better’ he said.
Mr Kasozi urged for the training of more ophthalmologists to help curb the growing eye care burden in the country.
‘We have about 60 of them in the country and that is not to include those who are in their retirement. imagine one person to one million people and what that means, that is what makes also services very expensive since many people across the country are seeking for the few professionals’ he said.
The LWF Thematic Director for child eye health and uncorrected refractive errors Mr Wolfgang Gindorfer said training of teachers to identify children who have sight problems will ensure that after examination, they are either referred for medical treatment or provided with clinically necessary spectacles.
‘We have started to develop a school eye health manual, which is now integrated in the teacher trainings curriculum, so that all teachers learn about school eye health, how to do a simple visual acuity test, after they have gone through their training as teachers, they can do acuity tests in the schools where they are posted’ he said.
Mr Wolfgang said there is need for tax exemption on optical corrections, spectacles and low vision assistive devices among others for people with eye defects in order to enable the affected receive the fully recommended health care.
The Burkina Faso LFW eye health programme manager, Ms Olga Kabre said as part of enhancing good eye health, an effective national eye health program has been set up to promote development of child eye health and strengthening capacities of ophthalmologists through continuous training and sub specialisation on specifically pediatric ophthalmology.