Patients benefit on World Sight Day
"We would like to commend the staff for being passionate about their job and for the daily team work they display."
EACH year on the second Thursday of October, McCord Hospital joins the rest of the world to celebrate World Sight Day in an effort to drive global attention on blindness and vision impairment.
This year’s theme was “Make vision count.”
The hospital planned to operate on 150 cataract patients during World Sight Week.
The main focus was to prioritize the bilateral, children and working middle age people with aim being to minimize the waiting list to prevent people going blind because of long waiting period.
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According to the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), there are approximately 285 million people worldwide living with low vision and blindness.
Of these, 39 million people are blind and 246 million have moderate or severe visual impairment. 90 per cent of blind people live in low-income countries. 80 per cent of visual impairment is avoidable, being readily treatable and/or preventable.
Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in adults.
This is an eye condition which affects the central part of your retina called the macula. This causes changes to your central vision Other significant causes of sight loss are glaucoma, cataracts and diabetic retinopathy.
ALSO READ: Mc Cord Hospital aim for 150 cataract ops for World Sight Week
Glaucoma is an eye condition where your optic nerve is damaged by the pressure of the fluid inside your eye.
The hospital also partnered with Into The Light Foundation and Ahmed Al Kadi to operate on a further 80 patients, over the weekend to reduce the waiting list of approximately 2000 patients.
One of the oldest patients, who is 106 years old, was operated on Monday. His excitement was clearly visible as he had been on the waiting list for three years..
Dr Kapil Moodley Head of Ophthalmogist said: “Staff are doing their best to locate the patients who have been on the waiting list for some time. Some have changed their numbers, so alternative numbers are used to trace the patient which is time consuming.We are grateful for the NGOs who helped us and hope to reach the 300 mark. Every October we have iCare programs which are aimed at making people more aware of eye problems they might encounter. It takes five minutes to remove a cataract which also increases life expectancy. It is not a death sentence, people need to go to the clinic.”
