By Robinson Erebi
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The Honourable member representing Southern Ijaw Federal Constituency in the National Assembly, Engr. Rodney Ebikebina Ambaiowei, has partnered with the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria to provide medical eye diagnosis, treatment, and medicated eye glasses for individuals experiencing visual impairment.
The medical outreach project was launched in Amassoma on Monday with a seminar on the theme, “Visual Impairment And Its Effect On Human Performance.”
In his welcome address, Hon. Rodney Ambaiowei explained that the medical outreach project aims to diagnose and address eye problems within the community. He emphasized the importance of maintaining good eyesight and the severe consequences of blindness.
Hon. Ambaiowei, who was ably represented at the occasion by Dr. Isaiah Korikiye explained that the aim of this medical outreach project is to carry out a diagnostic analysis and find out the problems associated with our eyes.
“My good people of Southern Ijaw Federal Constituency, we all know the importance of having good eyes. When an eye has problem, it would affect the entire body, and it could contribute to the person becoming dysfunctional. He would have loved to treat malaria because he thinks malaria, anybody can take Paracetamol and treat malaria. Anybody can take Phensic, anybody can take Chloroquine and it can reduce the efficacy of malaria on our body.”
“But the eye, once its blind, you do not have anywhere to go, you become handicapped, even your children might not take care of you, and that will amount to your sudden death. So Rodney in his own understanding, he organised in collaboration with the Federal Government to first treat the eyes of our people.”
“So, specifically the attention is to examine you, and identify your eye problems and to treat your eye problems”, he said.
In his remarks, the Registrar of the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria, Pharm. Babashehu Ahmed commended Hon. Rodney Ambaiowei for the outreach programme.
Pharm. Ahmed who was represented by Pharm. Agbor Ayikana, said that health outreach programmes have always played a critical role in improving and extending the reach of health care to the people.. He emphasized that this effort as community outreach by Hon. Ambaiowei his constituents in Southern Ijaw Federal Constituency is eminently sensible and practical plan as a constituency project.
“It is honorable and worthy to say here that Hon. Rodney Ebikebina Ambaiowei made the right choice to have situated project in health. This is because the saying owns valid point when they say “health is wealth”.
“It is imperative to also state that the sustainable development goal number 3 is “healthy wellbeing for all by the year 2030”. Access to quality healthcare services, particularly, at the community level is essential towards achieving both the SDGs and universal health coverage as a right only, thus it provides health services to communities that have not enjoyed this sort services, but it also provides our public health institutions with invaluable disease identification opportunities and outreach lessons”, he said.
On behalf of the management and staff of the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria, Pharm. Babashehu Ahmed expressed appreciation and congratulated Hon. Rodney Ambaiowei his foresightedness and hard-work in planning and implementation of the project. He also congratulated the would-be beneficiaries in Southern Ijaw Federal Constituency for the takeoff of this laudable project.
Speaking in his lecture on the theme “Visual Impairment And Its Effects On Human Performance”, the guest lecturer Dr. Emmanuel O. Braimoh said that visual impairment simply means that the person is not seeing clearly enough, and not complete blindness. And that visual impairment has its effects on the life of such persons.
He thanked Hon. Engr. Rodney Ambaiowei, who knows the importance of good vision, for putting this programme together, and echoing the fact that “our eye is just a pair, there’s no spare and so we must take care” because for you to be able to read and do anything, you must have and maintain your eyes.
Dr. Braimoh who is also a Consultant Public Health Optometrist, explained that according to the recent World Health Organization and the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness a statistics, 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide. And out of this figure, 39 million people are blind, 246 million wwwwweee have no vision, and up to 80% of all these impairments is avoidable by prevention, treatment and cure.
“And that is why today, we’re gathered together to identify, if you have any, we’ll treat, and so to ensure that our lives would last us a lifetime”.
“There are some people, when you look at this visual impairments we’re talking about, we have a mild one, we have medium or moderate one, we have severe one. And then, there are different types of visual impairments. If you look at it, the leading cause of visual impairment is refractive errors. We have next to it, the cataract. We have next to it, the glaucoma, we have age related muscular degeneration, and we have diabetic retinopathy”.
“When we’re talking about visual impairments, the leading cause is refractive error. And at that refractive error, in a course of talking, Dr. Isaiah Korikiye mentioned some. There’s one we call the long sighted one or hyperopia, there’s the one we call shortsighted or myopia, there’s the one we call astigmatism. And there’s another one, that is not a refractive error, but as you get older, you find it difficult to read certain prints. For those of us that read our Bible, you find out that you can no longer read your Bible very well, you know, these are challenges that begin to come. But when you push the material away, it appears a bit clearer or when you put light on it, it appears a bit clearer. All these are forms of visual impairment”.
“I’m happy today, that leading cause of visual impairments, a very good proportion of it is being taken care of today because there’s going to be glasses to take care of a very good aspect of this problem. And I’m sure that a good number of people will be taken care of as we go through the screening today by the grace of God”.
“Now, we also have Cataract, that one you cannot see clearly, but can be removed by surgical intervention. Then we have Glaucoma. Yes, that is the second leading cause of visual impairment but it’s the first leading cause of irreversible blindness. When there’s Glaucoma, the visual loss from it cannot be reversed.”
“But today, you’ll be screened to ensure that there’s no problem, and if there is, early diagnosis is the right time to quickly pick it and manage it. And that’s why I’m happy for this robust programme that has been put together by our Honourable”, he said.
The Ag. Paramount Ruler of Amassoma, Chief Godswill Akedesuo, expressed gratitude for the program, as he personally benefited from the eye check and received glasses to correct his sight problem. He acknowledged that eye problems are widespread and that the outreach program will provide relief for many individuals in the community.
Over 500 constituents attended and benefited practically from the medical outreach project in Southern Ijaw Constituency 1. The programme is expected continue in Constituency 2, 3, 4, namely, Angiama, Ekowe and Olugbobiri respectively, all in Southern Federal Constituency.
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