Lions Clubs in Ghana at the weekend organized a
special eye-screening exercise in Tema to commemorate this year's World Sight Day under the theme: "Gender and Eye Health-Equal Access to Care".
Speaking on Eye Care at a seminar preceding the screening, Dr David Adiepena, Past President of the Tema Lions Club, advised Ghanaians to go for periodic checks on their eyes in order to maintain healthy eyes.
Dr Adiepena said most people in the country suffered from Glaucoma, a disease of the eye, adding that statistically, about five out of every 100 persons have the disease.
He said it was regrettable to note that the first risk factor of the
disease which is genetically acquired, was being a black person.
Dr Adiepena who is also the Head of the Ophthalmology Department at the Tema General Hospital, advised people of 35 years and above, to have regular eye checks to prevent them from contracting Glaucoma, which he said, was a silent blind disease.
Lion Henry Boakye, President of the Tema Lions Club, quoted World Health Organization figures, and said on a worldwide scale, 75 per cent of all blindness was found on the African and Asian Continents.
Lion Boakye said approximately, 314 million people across the globe lived with low vision and blindness, adding that out of this figure, 45
million "are blind, and 269 million have low vision that they are even unaware of."
He said in spite of this, 80 per cent of blindness was avoidable, that is, either treatable, curable or preventable.
Lion Kate Baaba Hudson, Chairperson of Zone 161 of the Lions Club, said the clubs would not relent in their efforts to build strong pillars to serve the communities in which Lions lived.
Lion Hudson said as Lions, membership drive was one of the cardinal principles required by members to achieve set goals and objectives.
On Lions World Sight Day which falls on the second Thursday of October every year, Lion Hudson indicated that each year, hundreds of Lions Clubs the world over "hold vision screenings, community education programmes,
eyeglass collections and other special projects in that month, as part of activities marking the celebration."
She said the Day was created in 1998 to spotlight the importance of eradicating preventable blindness and improving sight.
The Tema Lions Clubs partnered sister Lions Clubs and eye care professionals from the Tema General Hospital to conduct vision, cataracts
and glaucoma screenings for students at the Tema Campus of the Methodist University.
On October 8, Lions Clubs International, the world's largest secular service organization with over 44,500 clubs and more than 1,4 million
members in 201 nations around the world, commemorated this year's Lions World Sight Day in Prague, Czech Republic, where members screened the eyes of nearly 100 kindergarteners in two schools in Prague.