The federal government has unveiled plans to expand access to affordable and quality eye care services to more than 25 million vulnerable Nigerians by 2030 as part of efforts to reduce avoidable blindness and accelerate progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
Under the initiative, Nigeria will integrate Primary Eye Care (PEC) into Primary Health Care (PHC) services nationwide, train 10,000 frontline healthcare workers in eye care, distribute five million pairs of ready-made reading spectacles and provide 25,000 fully subsidised cataract surgeries.
The commitment was announced at the Global Summit for Eye Health hosted by the Government of Antigua and Barbuda, co-hosted by the governments of Bangladesh, Guyana, Ireland and Nigeria, in technical collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The summit was convened by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB).
According to a statement from the summit, Nigeria also plans to increase its active eye care workforce by 20 per cent and improve its Effective Cataract Surgical Coverage (eCSC) by 30 percentage points by 2030.
The initiative, jointly submitted by several partners, including Sightsaversand Christian Blind Mission, builds on Nigeria’s existing eye health strategy and seeks to address the burden of avoidable vision loss, particularly among women, older people and underserved populations in rural and hard-to-reach communities.
The statement noted that an estimated 24 million Nigerians were living with vision loss in 2020, while approximately 1.3 million people were blind.
Speaking at the summit, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume, said eye health should be recognised as a critical driver of economic development rather than treated as a peripheral issue in global development discussions.
“For too long eye health has been treated as a footnote in the global development conversation. We must alter that paradigm because vision care is an economic accelerator,” he said.
Akume added that poverty reduction, inclusive education and sustainable economic growth could not be achieved without addressing the vision needs of vulnerable populations.
“We cannot eradicate poverty, we cannot ensure inclusive education, and we cannot foster sustainable economic growth if a billion people are left in the dark, and the Value of Vision report shows what a modest investment can do.
“$71 billion over five years spent on six critical priorities would unlock $199 billion in economic benefits by 2030,” he said.
The summit also highlighted the economic benefits of investing in eye health in Nigeria, citing the Value of Vision: The Case for Investing in Eye Health report on Vision Atlas.
According to the analysis, investments of $110 million in Nigeria’s eye health sector could generate $2.45 billion in economic benefits by 2030, while improving educational outcomes, productivity, road safety and mental health.
The report further estimated that such investments could avert 13,590 cases of depression, prevent 56 traffic-related deaths, avoid 1,479 traffic injuries and generate the equivalent of 70,641 additional years of learning.
An example of ongoing collaborative interventions is the Focus on Clear Vision project, supported by Sightsavers, government and other partners in Kebbi, Jigawa and Bauchi States.
The initiative provides school-aged children with access to essential eye care through vision screening and the distribution of spectacles to those who need them. The project has so far screened more than 1.5 million children and teachers and distributed over 33,000 pairs of glasses.
Also speaking on interventions to expand access to eye care, the Country Manager of VisionSpring, Abimbola Ogundirahun, said the organisation was supporting the Federal Ministry of Health’s Jigi Bola initiative, which seeks to integrate access to reading glasses into primary healthcare services.
She said VisionSpring was providing training, technical assistance and affordable, fit-for-purpose eyeglasses to strengthen the capacity of frontline health workers to deliver vision care services.
The Chief Executive Officer of IAPB, Peter Holland, described the Global Summit for Eye Health as a defining moment for global eye health, noting that governments, organisations and private sector leaders had come together around a shared commitment to expanding access to sight-saving services.
“The package of commitments announced this week will improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people and help them go to school, stay in work, care for their families, and participate fully in society,” he said.
Holland added that the commitments demonstrated growing recognition that investment in eye health was essential to human potential, economic growth and sustainable development.
Sunday Ehigiator
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