Hospital with a vision to tackle blindness

specialists on African mission to prevent, alleviate and cure scourge of eye disease

Africans at risk of curable blindness are being helped to keep their sight or have it restored by a remarkable act of generosity by a hospital in Beijing. That help is given despite China's own problems with blindness and a shortage of specialists to deal with it.

Beijing Tongren Hospital sends six or seven eye specialists to Africa every year. Wang Ningli, vice-president of the hospital, says 450,000 people lose their sight in China every year, which means a person per minute, and the number of eye specialists, 30,000, is well short of what is required to take care of the growing numbers.

"But that does not mean we cannot extend a helping hand to our African friends," says Wang, who is also a director of Tongren Eye Center.

When the specialists are in Africa, they not only treat the needy but also devote a lot of effort in training and teaching local personnel about preventing, alleviating and curing blindness.

Visual impairment is a global scourge, Wang said. He was speaking at a news conference at the hospital on Oct 9, the second Thursday of October, decreed by the United Nations to be World Sight Day.

The main challenges are the increasing numbers of those with diabetes, which can lead to blindness, and those with high blood pressure and the aging population, he says.

However, Wang, who is also the chairman of the Beijing Institute of Ophthalmology, is optimistic, saying he believes that in 10 years the number of patients with chronic eye problems will fall as the quality of facilities and the human resources available rise.

Hu Ailin, of the National Committee for Prevention of Blindness, Beijing Tongren Hospital, says China has set up a three-level blindness prevention network overseeing, teaching and practical supervision for staff at all levels.

China is not alone in the prevalence of diabetes as some African countries are now beginning to suffer from the same scourge. In Tanzania, one of the countries to which Chinese eye doctors are sent, the ministry of health urges all those with diabetes to undergo regular medical check-ups.

More than 900,000, a little more than 2 percent of the population, are said to be visually impaired, 300,000 of them blind.

The World Health Organization says that almost 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired, 39 million blind.

About 90 percent of people with sight problems are from developing countries, and of those, 82 percent are aged 50 years and above. The WHO estimates that in 80 percent of cases blindness can be treated.

Apart from diabetes, other causes of preventable blindness include cataracts, glaucoma, trachoma and refractive errors.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 10/17/2014 page28)