NIGERIA-HEALTH: And the Blind Shall See

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

IBEJU-LEKKI, Nigeria, Sep 9 1996 (IPS) - Fifty-year-old Baba Karimu faced a bleak future until a team of doctors visited this coastal fishing and tourist town about 25 km from Lagos.

“I could only see with one eye because of an ailment in my right eye,” said Karimu. “But when these doctors visited this place … and treated some of us I was able to regain my sight fully.”

Under a pilot programme to fight blindness which kicked off in August 1995, surgeons from Eye Foundation, a local non- governmental organisation, removed the cataract from Karimu’s eye in October last.

“The expedition team diagnosed and treated over 100 inhabitants in the Ibeju-Lekki community for various eye ailments free of charge,” says Kunle Hassan, president of the foundation. “Drugs were also provided free.

“The foundation performed sight-restoring surgery free on 11 of the patients who had become blind in at least one eye. Ten of these were operated on for cataracts, while one underwent surgery for glaucoma.”

The foundation’s Aid and Clinical Research Centre for the prevention of blindness has so far performed operations on at least 180 Nigerians in three states, under its curative and preventive ophthalmic care programme.

Set up by philanthropists to prevent and restore sight, the foundation is now working with the Lagos state government which provided a building for its secretariat, and the federal government which has given it an undisclosed sum of money.

Its free services have saved many poor Nigerians unable to afford treatment at government and private health facilities.

The blindness that results from cataracts, glaucoma and onchocerciasis can be avoided if they are treated in their early stages, but this costs about 70,000 naira (875 U.S. dollars) in public hospitals and up to 1,000 U.S. dollars in private clinics.

These are sums that most Nigerians cannot afford. Karimu, for instance, could do nothing until the Eye Foundation’s team of two doctors and four ophthalmic nurses helped him.

“I could not afford the fee in a hospital, I learnt it costs a lot to have one’s eye tested and operated on in government and private hospitals in the city,” recalls the fisherman.

He earns less than 500 naira (about six dollars) a day from his trade and little is left after he buys food, pays the 200-naira rent on his one-bedroom apartment and educates five children. “I have to educate them so they won’t fall into the same poverty level I am now,” he explains

Mary Ibang, another resident of this town had cataracts removed from both eyes. “I did not have anyone to help me and I did not have the money to go to any hospital,” she says. “I thank God for sending the doctors.”

However, the Eye Foundation’s efforts may prove little more than a drop in the ocean in this country which is hard hit by blindness. Apart from cataracts, Nigeria is grappling with glaucoma, in which high intraocular pressure destroys part of the eye, especially the nerves. But the leading cause of loss of sight is a fly whose larvae spread Onchocerciasis.

Onchocerciasis is a skin disease which causes blindness when it reaches the eye. It is more commonly known as river blindness.

Nigeria is the country worst hit by river blindness with 30 to 40 percent of all cases registered worldwide. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 150,000 Nigerians are among the 270,000 Africans afflicted by onchocerciasis, which affects 26 of Nigeria’s 30 states.

A recent national survey by the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the National Onchocerciasis Control Programme shows that about 28.2 million of the 40.3 million Nigerians who live in areas prone to the disease run a 70-percent risk of infection.

WHO officials say river blindness is preventable if drugs are distributed in affected areas.

“Virtually every case of the massive loss of sight on the continent could have been prevented with Mecitzan, a drug being supplied free of charge worldwide by a US-based company,” says Lola Sadiq, WHO Adviser on Disease Prevention and Control.

A national chart shows a rise from 9,556 Nigerians treated for the disease when the Mecitzan delivery programme started in 1989, to over 4.3 million persons by the end of 1995.

But, as Sadiq laments, though the drug is donated, the cost of delivering it to people in high-risk areas remains enormous. The federal government is running an awareness campaign to stem the disease but its health budget remains very low.

“At the moment, no Nigerian philanthropist is associated with assisting in financing the delivery of this drug to prevent more Nigerians from becoming blind and acquiring skin diseases which have continued to prevent young girls and boys from getting either husbands or wives,” says Sadiq.