Rashida, now 30, a resident of a village of Satkhira district, suffered from blindness due to cataract in both her eyes since she was a child. She got married at her teenage. Being informed, she went to Satkhira Sadar Hospital where she had her cataract operated on by an eye consultant of the hospital, which was supported by The Fred Hollows Foundation.
Rashida was filled with joy when she opened her eyes to see her family.
According to The Fred Hollows Foundation, cataract remains the major cause of avoidable blindness in Bangladesh.
World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that about 285 million people worldwide live with serious vision impairment. Of these, 39 million people are blind and 246 million have moderate to severe visual impairment. Without effective, major intervention, the number of blind people worldwide will rise to 76 million by 2020. Some 80% of blindness is avoidable - i.e. treatable and/or preventable. About 153 million people simply need eyeglasses to correct refractive errors (near-sightedness, far-sightedness or astigmatism). Restorations of sight and blindness prevention strategies are among the most cost-effective interventions in health care.
An estimated 19 million children are visually impaired. Of these, 12 million children are visually impaired due to refractive errors, a condition that could be easily diagnosed and corrected. Around 1.4 million are irreversibly blind for the rest of their lives. The main causes of blindness in children are also causes of child mortality - up to 60% of children who lose their sight will die within a year. Survivors will spend 40 years without sight. Thus, blindness in children accounts for nearly one-third of the global economic cost of blindness, though it represents less than 4% of the overall magnitude. About 90% of the world's visually impaired people live in developing countries like Bangladesh. Globally, uncorrected refractive errors are the main cause of visual impairment and cataracts are the leading cause of blindness, said WHO.
Restorations of sight and blindness prevention strategies are among the most cost-effective interventions in health care.
Bangladesh has nearly 750,000 blind people. Of them, 650,000 are blind due to cataract.
A national study by International Centre for Eye Health, UK and Child Sight Foundation (CSF) revealed that around 40,000 children are blind in Bangladesh. Cataract is the commonest cause of child blindness in Bangladesh.
Childhood cataract --- if not treated early --- makes children blind forever. Without early intervention for cataract blindness children may go blind permanently. Blinding conditions increase child mortality - 50 per cent of children who become blind die within two years.
The cataract affected children can be socially rehabilitated by providing treatment and rehabilitation. Blindness in children is often preventable if communities and parents become aware of the causes.
The issue of cataract may be new to many of us, because we generally see the cataract in the eyes of elderly people. Cataract can affect babies and children although most of us think it as a disease of the elderly.
According to CSF, cataract may be developed in the eyes of children and it may gradually impair the visual power of children if it is not treated timely. Cataract is a treatable disease and only a simple operation can restore the visual power of many children.
Parents should go to physicians immediately for cataract operation. The cataract does not need to mature.
Physicians said cataract is a clouding of the lens of the eye. Cataract is the condition where the lens of the eye gradually becomes hard and opaque. Cataract-affected people gradually lose their eye sight.
Childhood blindness has been identified as a priority disease to control within the Vision 2020 programme. Blindness in childhood is a priority for several reasons.
Visual impairment in a child limits participation in opportunities for education and self-development. Over 90% of blind children receive no schooling and few are able to realise their full potential. Refractive errors are the most important cause of avoidable visual impairment in school-age children.
The issue of visual impairment in children is more complex than that of aged people. It is thought that 75% of child education is done by visual power. Hence, growing up and education of visually impaired children is done more slowly than the sighted children. So, we should take urgent steps for eliminating visual impairment of the children.
According to CSF, care before and after birth can help avoid blindness from malnutrition, Vitamin A deficiency, conjunctivitis of the newborn and retinopathy of prematurity. Look after your child's sight - with vitamin-A rich foods, eye hygiene and safety. Glaucoma and cataract affect children too - but treatment is more challenging than in adults! Early intervention is key to ensuring that children with eye problems have the best possible outcomes.
Eliminating childhood blindness will lead to a greater reduction in the number of 'blind years' experienced by adults.
People should know that eye diseases are not the results of sin, it is a disease like other diseases and timely intervention can solve the problems.
Parents should take their children to expert physicians if their children face any eye problem. Drugs should not be used on eyes of children without the advice of expert physicians and affected children should not be taken to kabiraj or inexperienced doctors for treatment.
The causes of avoidable blindness are frequently associated with poverty and lack of access to quality eye care services. Avoidable blindness is more common in the poorest of the poor, women and marginalised populations. Ninety per cent of the world's blind people live in developing countries. People who live in the developing world are five to ten times more likely to go blind than people who live in highly industrialised countries.
According to CSF, regular eye check-up, early and timely detection of eye problems can prevent blindness in children. A good number of eye problems can be cured provided the children are treated, operated in particular, by well-trained pediatric ophthalmologists at specialised pediatric ophthalmology units of selective hospitals.
Most of eye care facilities and rehabilitation services in Bangladesh are located in the urban areas of Dhaka and Chittagong despite the fact that 80 per cent of the country's people live in rural areas. This presents a significant problem for children who are financially or physically unable to travel from their rural villages to the country's urban centres to receive the services they need.
"Vision-2020, The Right to Sight" is a global initiative to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020.
VISION 2020 addresses blindness in children as a major public health priority. After the Vision 2020 was launched by WHO in 1999, Bangladesh quickly became a signatory to the global campaign in the year 2000.
Eighty per cent of all cases of blindness can be prevented or treated; the right to sight can and must be fulfilled.
We need a world in which no one is needlessly blind and where those with unavoidable vision loss can achieve their full potential.
The overall aim should be to eliminate the main causes of avoidable blindness and to prevent the projected doubling of avoidable vision impairment between 1990 and 2020.
We should increase awareness, within key audiences, of the causes of avoidable blindness and the solutions to the problem, advocate for and secure the necessary resources to increase prevention and treatment activities and facilitate the planning, development and implementation of national VISION 2020 programmes.
The writer is a freelance journalist. Email: [email protected]
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