Dispelling darkness: Revamped federal committee to help prevent and cure eye diseases

Expected to prepare five-year plan to integrate eye care at all levels.

ISLAMABAD:

In a bit to improve eye care to stem the rising incidence of preventive blindness in the country, the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination (NHSRC) has revamped its National Committee for Eye Health (NCEH).

NCEH has been constituted on the basis of public-private partnership and includes members from Ministry of NHSRC, provincial health ministries and representatives from Sightsavers International and aid organisations.

The committee will develop a new five-year National Plan of Action for the Prevention of Blindness in the country and will present it before the ministry for approval. Speaking to The Express Tribune, Dr Baseer Khan Achakzai, the focal person for the committee from the Ministry of NHSRC, said the plan of action will focus on developing and strengthening eye-care services and their integration in the existing healthcare system at all levels, including training and retraining of health workers in visual health.

The major focus will be on establishing a cornea bank and offering corneal transplant in all major public hospitals across the country, he said. “It is offered mostly by private hospitals which is unaffordable for many.”

Around 50,000 lady health workers have already been trained and another 50,000 will also be trained to identify eye disease among people and to refer them to major public hospitals for treatment, he said.

NCEH also aims to upgrade over 120 secondary, 27 tertiary eye health services and establish four training institutes for human resource development in the public sector to test and integrate eye care in the National Health Management Information System (NHMIS). This will help increase public spending and earmark subsidies.

Sharing the committee’s background, he said in 2008 a National Steering Committee for Prevention of Blindness was restructured and renamed as NCEH. “However, before the devolution of the Ministry of Health under the 18th Amendment it was working for improving eye health in the country”. But after devolution, it suffered just like other healthcare programmes, he added.

“Currently there is a need to revamp the eye healthcare programme in the country but for that there is a need to have updated data on eye diseases which is unavailable since 2004,” said Achakzai. In 2002-2004, the prevalence of blindness in the country was 0.9 per cent of which 80 per cent was avoidable but no one knows about the current prevalence rate.

A major challenge is the acute shortage of qualified ophthalmologists in district headquarter hospitals (DHQs) across the country. “Very few DHQs have qualified ophthalmologists, in the majority of these hospitals qualified technicians act as substitutes who also carry out surgeries,” he said. “There is a need for more qualified eye specialists.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 20^th, 2014.