Chioma Obinna
7 October 2008
Persons suffering varying degrees of eye ailments can now benefit from affordable comprehensive eye care services in Lagos.
The services are available at seven designated eye care units located within the premises of the General Hospitals at Lagos, Epe, Gbagada, Ikorodu, Orile Agege, Isolo and Ajeromi, which were recently equipped with eye care equipment valued at N40 million.
Good Health Weekly gathered that the equipment would enable each of the eye care units undertake medical, surgical treatment and special investigations. State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris conducted GHW round the equipment at the Gbagada General Hospital said the newly acquired equipment includes various devices such as an operating microscope, scan, auto refractor keratometer, central visual field analysis and projected visual activity chart amongst others.
He pointed out that with the equipment, the centers, apart from been in line with the modification of the blindness prevention programme's reviewed logistic implementation plans, will also reduce the work load on the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) as they will offer medical and surgical services for common eye conditions such as cataract, glaucoma and pterygium among others.
Idris said the reviewed logistic implementation plans includes the involvement of the people at the grassroots especially those in the local government areas in primary health care by training representatives from local government areas on basic eye care so that they (the representatives) can conduct basic screening at their various locations at the primary health care levels.
He noted that the State has further been delineated to catchments areas to be served by each of these designated eye units with the aim of providing secondary eye care services for about 1.5million people through each of the units adding that in order to achieve this objective, eye care staff who are highly skilled have been redistributed to cover the designated seven units.
"An efficient referral system for eye care services within the State has invariably been established by the operation of the primary eye care units. This is because patients who access services at the primary eye care units are referred to secondary units for more difficult conditions and surgical interventions while from the secondary units, cases requiring subspecialty consultation can then be referred to our tertiary center at the LASUTH eye care Institute."
Idris opined that at the tertiary level, there was an Eye Institute equipped with ultra modern ophthalmic equipment to meet the increasing demands for eye care delivery in the state stressing that a Corneal Eye Bank within the Institute would also be established as soon as an enabling law to that effect has been enacted by the State House of Assembly.
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