Dupe Ademola-Popoola, an Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the College of Health Sciences, University of Ilorin has disclosed that eighty percent of blindness in children are avoidable.
Ademola-Popoola who gave the disclosure in an interview with journalists in Ilorin, explained that “80 percent of learning comes from vision and that once any young one loses his sight, everything regarding his earthly existence, will be negatively impacted”.
The don, who is also a Consultant Ophthalmologist at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, revealed that research has shown that most of the cases of childhood blindness are caused by communal and parental neglect before and upon pregnancy as a result of omission of certain precautionary procedure, most especially on the part of mothers.
She said that “when vision is good, your future will be good” as she expressed the belief that anyone with perfectly working eyes is more likely to live a more accomplished life than someone who does not, saying that was why 90 percent of the blind neither go to school nor acquire any skillful knowledge that can make them to be economically productive.
Ademola-Popoola therefore urged parents and guardians not to spare any effort at ensuring that their children and wards do not suffer sight challenges, adding that training a blind is six times more costly than raising a normal child.
She equally stressed the need for parents and guardians to give greater consideration to efforts that may lead to the prevention and discovery of vision inadequacies in their children and wards even before pregnancy.
However, she has been granted patent on a device, Teacher Led Vision Screener (TELVIS), she developed for the detection of sight challenges in children.
The device, according to her aims at ensuring that younger persons are prevented from going blind and could be used by non-professionals, particularly teachers, to detect sight inadequacies among pupils.
The other device developed by her is VISION SAVE, which is particularly useful in the course of immunisation of children between the ages of 0 and 2 and also for Schools for Special Needs to address further complications that are usually suffered by blind pupils.
The medical expert commended the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for granting her the financial supports used in the production and deployment of the two devices as well as training non-professionals simple rules of how to use those devices effectively.
She also appreciated the authorities of the University of Ilorin and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) for assisting her research team with a grant to further train key informants in various communities with a view to finding out those who have eye problems.
Ademola-Popoola, who said that the UITH Eye Clinic is among the leading centres offering quality services in Nigeria, explained that the latest effort is expected to cover over 200,000 children of the University’s primary catchment areas as it is intended to enable ordinary people benefit more from experts in order to bridge the gap between the town and gown.
She explained that “every available platform in the University will be used to reach as many members of our various communities as possible”
While enumerating some of the challenges facing the war against blindness in children as including ignorance, paucity of funds, non-adherence to legislation on child health, limited number of experts and logistics, she opined that it is important for professionals of related disciplines to develop inter-disciplinary approaches in the development of skills, devices and technologies that can be used to address human challenges.
She added that doing so will certainly help in stimulating prompt treatment of such early discoveries to prevent eventual blindness in children, which may cause them life-time discomfort.
The medical scholar added that a lot of efforts are currently being exerted by her team to building the capacity of non-professionals towards reversing avoidable blindness.
SIKIRAT SHEHU, Ilorin
