The National Eye Centre, Kaduna has organised an awareness lecture to sensitise the public as part of activities to mark the 2025 World Glaucoma Week in the Kaduna State capital.
The event, which took place at centre on Wednesday, attracted students from selected schools, Civil Society Organisations, the media and other stakeholders.
The centre’s Chief Medical Director (CMD), Dr. Amina Hassan Wali said that the week is marked as Glaucoma week worldwide, which has been celebrated not just at National Eye Centre, but in the whole of the country, and worldwide.
‘It a day that has been set aside by the glaucoma society to create awareness for glaucoma because of its complications and the cost of blindness’, she said.
According to her, ‘it’s a very important topic for National Eye Centre being the apex hospital for eye care in Nigeria, so we are using the opportunity to create awareness of what glaucoma is and to also create awareness about the importance of eye screening.
‘We are also using the opportunity for screening the communities near us to give them free eye screening and those identified with the disease will be given free treatment and surgery’.
The CMD however lamented challenges faced in managing the disease. She said: ‘First, glaucoma is an irreversible cause of blindness, but if it’s detected early, it can be treated early and the patient will not go blind. As I said, it’s a lifetime disease, so the patient or individual that is diagnosed with glaucoma will need to have a longtime follow-up in the hospital, and than there are various ways of treating glaucoma.
‘You have the lesser surgery, you can do the surgical and then medication, but we all know medications now is one of the best, good quality ones they are expensive, but you know sometimes an individual or patient may need more than one eye drop, but not all Nigerians will be able to afford it, so normally we offer surgery as the first line of treatment for most of the patients that suffer from or present with glaucoma’.
In his paper, the centre’s Consultant Ophthalmologist at the Glaucoma Clinic, Dr. Asiya Kanan frowned at patients or individuals suffering from the disease taking to traditional solutions instead of visiting certified eye hospitals for early checks and treatment
‘Traditional medications most of the time are very dangerous to the eye, because you know before we are able to prescribe even in conventional hospitals, we have to do a research to be sure that its safe for the Patient, but they don’t do that, they just prescribe whatever the feel its safe and most times when patients come to the hospital, they have used these traditional medications; it worsens the eye condition, so I won’t advise anybody to go to any traditional eye doctor for whatever eye condition’, she said.
One of the patients with glaucoma, Ali Maidugu, speaking in Hausa said that life with glaucoma has not been easy, pointing out that the eye is the key to all parts of the body. He said that one may not know or feel the pains until one is faced with a problem like glaucoma. He called for more awareness on the disease so that people can take precautions.
While emphasising early checks, he regrettably hinted on how he did not understand the symptoms early enough, thinking it was dandruff until it when bad. Maidugu therefore stressed the need to go to hospital for early checks and stay away from traditional solutions.
