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Aid to the visually impaired to be boosted with ‘Vision 2020’

Feb 06, 2010 News

Intended to offer more assistance to persons who are visually impaired, a five-year project named ‘Delivering Vision 2020’ was kicked into motion Tuesday evening at the Princess International Hotel, East Bank Demerara.
The venture which was engaged under the auspices of the Caribbean Council for the Blind (CCB) saw the attendance of several high profile members of the blind society, the field of academia and government, including Prime Minister Samuel Hinds who was at the time performing the duties of President.
The project is being funded by the European Union. It will deliver eye care to the blind and visually impaired in Guyana. It will also do so throughout the Caribbean, a move which is aimed at reducing poverty in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goal.
According to Programme Manager of CCB-Eye Care Guyana, Mr Charles Vandyke, the foundation functions on three pillars including prevention of blindness, adjustment to blindness and inclusive education for children who are blind and visually impaired.
However, at the moment, the five-year project will focus mainly on preventing blindness, he added.
He said that Eye Care Guyana works in close partnership with the Ministry of Health, thus has been able to establish programmes across Guyana. Through its collaboration with the Health Ministry, several refractionists have been trained and a doctor is currently undergoing ophthalmology training in Paraguay.
Eye Care Guyana is also supporting the Bachelors of Science Degree in Optometry set to commence in September at the University of Guyana.
According to Minister of Health, Dr Leslie Ramsammy, the preservation of sight has to be a public health priority and is in fact a matter of fundamental human right. However, he lamented that the provision of services for those who live with vision impairment has been a neglected challenge on the development agenda.
“When we do speak of vision impairment as part of our development agenda it is more than likely a peripheral issue,” the Minister asserted.
If developmental and public health agendas are examined, Dr Ramsammy said that there is evidence to indicate that there has been a great neglect in terms of sight preservation. Even the World Health Organisation has not done enough to address the magnitude of the situation, the Minister mooted.
He said that there are more than 350 million people in the world with visual impairment while another 50 million live with total blindness in an era where more than 80 percent of blindness is preventable.
But according to the Minister, because of public health initiatives against infections, trachoma vision impairment has been reduced to fewer than 80 million.
“It shows what can happen when we have the will and when we give recognition to a problem. We over the years have come to recognise that our public health agenda as opposed to our hospital services must include the preservation of sight and the prevention of sight loss and the provision of commodities to live productive lives.”
According to the Minister, there are too many children that are left behind in the education system due to visual impairments and hearing lost too. Persons that are visually impaired, he said, must not be left out of the developmental plan, thus the need for continued collaboration with entities, the likes of Eye Care Guyana.
For this reason, he said that Government has chosen to embrace Vision 2020.erican Health Organisation.

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