The month of May, Childhood blindness and the role of the Optometrist!

OptomWow! Its just like yesterday, the month of May, the month just gone by filled with intrigues, drama, war, stagnated 'peace processes', the Arab spring, increased Taliban insurgency, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Memorial day in the United States of America and our own Children's Day (May 27th!); the pomp that accompanied that day all over the country, the joy on the faces of the children who matched, the pride of seeing our children march, salute and the stone-like expression on the faces of our executives who mounted the podium to observe the gallant leaders of tomorrow doing what they know best! In these children I saw our future. In these kids I saw the hope of continuity. They're the best stage of humanity. I thank God for these children. God bless Nigeria.But who is a child?UNICEF defined a child as anyone who is 16 years or less. These children are the most precious resource of families. They represent the family's future and their hopes. It should be noted that a blind child is a tragedy for his family and the society @ large. A child whose blindness could have been prevented or cured is even a great disaster.Childhood blindness is a collections of diseases or other factors like genetics and environmental influence that can definitively lead to blindness of the child. On its own, blindness is a visual acuity of  less than 3/60 on the better seeing eye.While we watched our children march on May 27th, Children's Day, it might interest you to know that there are estimated 500,000 new cases of childhood blindness per year and approximately 50% of these children die between 1-2 years of life! Definitely childhood blindness increases the mortality rates of children of under 5 years. This is worth giving serious attention because, 57% of all childhood blindness is unavoidable (i.e. cannot be cured!). 47% of childhood blindness could either be preventable (about 28%) through improved primary health care services, especially prenatal care for women. While the remaining 15% could be treated through improved Primary eye care services (the Primary eye care Optometrists etc) and specialized surgical eye care and low vision services.
Curiously, childhood blindness is reportedly the second largest cause of blind person years after cataract! It contributes approximately 70 million blind person years globally! This means that a child who is either born blind or someone who becomes blind @ childhood is expected to live 50 years approximately blind and hence contributing a very huge burden to the family, the society and to the individual too! I believe this calls for urgency in tackling childhood blindness by the Optometrists and other eye health professionals!
Economically, blindness in general has been documented to cost communities billionns of dollars in lost productivity, in caring for the blind person, in rehabilitation of the blind person & for special education. Childhood blindness is believed to gulp 1/3 of the total economic cost! For instance, in Africa & Asia that accommodates about 75 percent of blindness & approximately same percentage of blind children, 0.5 percent GDP is lost to blindness in general population with childhood blindness taking 0.16 percent of GDP approximately! This is very baffling & calls for serious looking into!
1.4 million children are said to be blind globally, Africa & Asia accommodates about 75 percent of these children! The prevalence of blindness in developed economies (childhood blindness is said to correlate with economic status of any given region!) is 0.3/1000 persons, while in under-developed economies is as high as 1.5/1000 persons! It should interest us to know that for every blind child, three children have serious vision impairments and 13 children needs glasses!
Finally, the following have been pencilled down as the most common causes of childhood blindness & will require more elaboration in subsequent blogs-
1) Corneal scarring secondary to measles & Vit A deficiencies
2) Ophthalmia neonatorum
3) Retinal diseases
4) Central nervous system lesions
5)Hereditory & Genetic diseases etc
I will be discussing each conditions in details subsequently! Thanks for your readership! Your comments will be highly appreciated! Sorry ones again for the delay in releasing this piece, I found myself in an unusual tarrain but thank goodness that I was able to meander through it!
To be continued...
Dr Victor Okwudiri Ezebuiroh.