Govt. urged to fund school children eye-care

Ho, Oct. 21, GNA - Mr Joseph Akussah, Executive Director of Christian Optical Centre (COC) at Ho on Monday appealed to the government to allow District Assemblies to devote part of their Common Fund to medical eye-care services for school children to curb the rising defects among them.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview, Mr Akussah said statistics showed that about 40 per cent of 6,000 basic school pupils screened during an eye-care outreach programme in parts of the Volta Region by accredited optical centres, suffered trachoma as a result of malnutrition.

He said the capitalisation of such accredited optical centres would complement government's efforts at decentralising health-care delivery making it accessible and affordable to the underprivileged rural folks.

Mr Akussah called for a new regime for eye-care delivery as vision impairment and related ailments could be a disincentive to teaching and learning in schools as well as on the transportation industry.

He appealed to the Driver and Vehicle Licence Authority (DVLA) to make eye-screening a mandatory requirement in the acquisition of driving licences to forestall the prevalence of accidents on the roads. Mr Akussah warned the public against self-medication on the eyes since it could result in blindness.

The Executive Director said COC was collaborating with the ASA Project, a German NGO to construct a -500 million cedi ultra-modern eye-care training centre in Ho and urged both governmental and NGOs to assist.