The National President for the Glaucoma Association of Ghana, Harrison Kofi Abutiate says everyone should be concerned about glaucoma because it is a silent blinding disease.
He said with 60,000 reported to have already gone permanently blind in Ghana, glaucoma had no symptoms or warning signs, and could only be managed to prevent blindness if diagnosed early.
Speaking to the media at 2021 awareness week in Accra under the theme “The World is Bright, Save your Sight”, he said it is worrying and asked the public to check their sight and get help before they go blind.
He noted that “about 700,000 people have glaucoma in Ghana but luckily because of the awareness creation we are getting to more people, and we are seeing that a lot of people come late”.
Mr Abutiate said the Association continued to create the needed awareness and education among Ghanaians each year on the fact that Glaucoma was a silent blinding disease, which was inherited, and could only be detected through screening.
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An ophthalmologist, Dr Dzifa Bella Ofori-Adjei, described the disease as a silent thief of sight, explaining that glaucoma was an umbrella term encompassing several different eye diseases that damaged the eye’s optic nerve, the nerve that transferred visual information from the retina to the brain.
She said some known risk factors such as high pressure in the eye that damage the optic nerve, ageing, diabetes, dark skin, family history and myopia (short sightedness) were responsible for the condition.
She said the only way to prevent it was to go for regular eye screening to ensure early detection and treatment.
“The average Ghanaian is reporting very late for the disease and it is at that stage that very little can be done because the disease is irreversible and causes irreversible blindness. So if you are presenting late, it means that whatever vision you have lost is gone and there is nothing that can be done about it” she added.
She also appealed to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority to prioritise glaucoma screening as a prerequisite for issuing and renewing driver’s licenses.
She said that could reduce the number of road accidents caused by glaucoma occasioned bad vision, which, she said, was highly prevalent.
SOURCE: ATLFMNEWS
