17 Oct 2017

The Minister of Infrastructure and Housing Development Mr Nonofo Molefhi who is also Member of Parliament for Selebi Phikwe East said that government has joined the international community in an effort to eliminate treatable blindness by the year 2020.

He said this when giving a keynote address during the commemoration of the World Sight Day event that was held under the theme ‘Universal Eye Health- Stronger Together’ at the Selebi Phikwe Stadium recently.

He said this year’s theme called for action by the government to mobilise resources to create a successful and sustainable eye care system to support the Vision 2020 so as to eliminate preventable and treatable blindness.

The Minister said all this was achievable if all stakeholders worked together through cross sector collaboration of public, private sector, government, eye care professionals and philanthropic interests to equitably help people to have sight all over the country.

He said the government’s target was to reduce the baseline prevalence of blindness by 25 per cent by 2019 and to significantly reduce the need for referrals outside the country for eye care services.

He said that Botswana as a member of the global village had to rise to the challenge of contributing to the attainment of this goal. He said all Batswana had a social obligation to avert the situation mainly because blindness and visual impairment had a far reaching social, economic and development implications, not only for individuals, but for the family and wider community. Furthermore, the minister indicated that lost productivity or lack of the opportunity to attend school due to visual impairment had implications for national development.

Mr Molefhi noted that in order to improve the current situation and move towards providing universal eye health, Botswana needed to adopt recommendations of the 66th World Health Assembly for the prevention of avoidable blindness through the global action plan for 2014-2019 which was based on the principles of universal access and equity, human right, evidence based practice, life course approach, and empowerment of the people with visual impairment.

He went on to explain that in Botswana, figures from the recent survey conducted in 2014 showed that prevalence of blindness in that year was 5.4 per cent among people aged 50 years and above, an increase of 1.7 per cent from a survey done in 2007. He explained that the leading causes of blindness and visual impairment identified were cataract followed by glaucoma and uncorrected refractive errors.

Minister Molefhi mentioned that in response to the increasing number of visual impairment and blindness cases, the Ministry of Health and Wellness had drawn a national strategic plan to combat avoidable blindness amongst the population through the 2020 pillars namely development and provision of human resources for eye care, development of appropriate infrastructure and equipment for delivery of eye health services and targeted control of major causes of blindness- cataract, glaucoma, refractive errors and diabetic retinopathy.

Among other strategies, Mr Molefhi said government had established eye care services at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of health care systems.  He also stated that government had trained and deployed ophthalmic nurses in most hospitals around the country and improved eye care infrastructure in all upgraded hospitals.

Meanwhile, the event which was organised by Selebi Phikwe District Health Management Team led by Dr Joseph Sharma in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Wellness was characterised by an awareness walk, various entertainment acts, tour of stalls, and testing for HIV as well as donation of blood.

The event was attended by the public, councillors, dikgosi, senior government officials and officials from the Ministry of Health and Wellness- Eye Health Section. ENDS