By Abigail N. Sommutaar
Jirapa, (UW/R), Oct. 16, GNA – Dr Zakarea Al-Hassan Balure, an Optometrist, has reiterated the need for parents and guardians to attach special attention to their children’s eye care as good eyesight is necessary for their holistic development.
“In as much as we are trying to get our children a good education, the good education is not guaranteed so much if their sight is not intact, so we should go the extra mile by ensuring routine eye examination.
“We expect parents to be proactive to children care, not just paying school fees, buying them uniform and books alone but their sight is also important”, he observed.
Dr Balure, also the Manager of Bliss Eye Care, a private eye clinic in Wa, said this in Jirapa during a free eye screening exercise for some school children to mark this year’s World Sight Day.
This year’s celebration was on the theme: “Love Your Eyes”, emphasising children’s eyes to drum home the importance of good eyesight for children and the need for increased deliberate efforts of parents and caretakers to ensure good eyesight for their children.
The screening exercise, organised by Bliss Eye Care in partnership with Ghana Vision under the Blissful Sight for Kids (BS4Ks) project saw, 1,468 children and some teachers went through the screening out of which 205 had normal eyesight.
A total of 1,182 of the children had pathological issues related to medication, 46 had Refractive Errors relating to eyeglasses and 35 of them had Cataracts and Glaucoma.
Dr. Balure expressed worry about the number of children with various eye conditions and blamed it on the ignorance of some parents about their children’s eye conditions and failure to do regular eye screening for them.
He, however, expressed hope that people would inculcate the habit of regular eye screening following the interventions by Bliss Eye Care and other charitable organisations.
Mr Paul Matthias Gandaabie, the Inclusive Coordinator in Charge of Special Education at the Jirapa Municipal Education Directorate, expressed gratitude to Bliss Eye Care and its partners for the intervention.
He said due to the importance they attached to children’s eye care; they used to organise annual eye screening for children with support from some organisations but could not organise it for the last two years.
Mr Gandaabie expressed concern about the limited number of special education officers in the Municipality as that was impeding their efforts to extend their services to some parts of the district.
Mr Gerald Kansoh, a teacher at the St. Augustine’s Basic School, emphasised the importance of regular eye screening saying, “You can never tell what is wrong with you until you go in for screening.”
He said teaching a class with learners having sight problems was a challenge since reading was necessary for education.
GNA