Nkawkaw, May 15, GNA - A forty thousand US dollar eye clinic block has been inaugurated at the Nkawkaw Holy Family Hospital to treat various eye diseases in the area.

The block which was constructed by the Standard Chartered Bank and Sight Savers, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), comprises an Out Patient Department (OPD), a theatre, a screening room and a recovery room. It is the fourth eye clinic to be constructed by the Bank and the NGO in the area after Asamankese, Suhum and Donkorkrom, all in the Eastern Region at a total cost of 442,000 dollars. In his welcoming address, the Medical Superintendent in-charge of the hospital, Dr. Sylvester Kwesi Amuzu, said the 227 bed hospital treated 121,885 patients last year out of which 6,757 were eye patients. He said the eye clinic was being manned by three nurses and a Regional Ophtomologist who visited the hospital monthly to handle surgery cases, while the nurses undertook voluntary eye screening and treatment in the various communities in the area.

Ms Joyce Eshun, Country Director of Sight Savers, said the NGO in collaboration with the Standard Chartered Bank and the Ministry of Health were working hard to eradicate avoidable eye diseases among the people. She said 2,500 people in the Eastern Region had been treated of various eye diseases, while 27 Optometry nurses had been trained and posted to the various hospitals in the region to take care of eye diseases.

Ms Eshun noted that a rapid survey conducted by the NGO showed that there were 15,000 blind people in the region, while 30,000 of the region's population had various eye diseases out of which 75 per cent could be avoided.

The Area Head of Standard Chartered Bank for West Africa in-charge of Corporate Affairs, Nii Okai Nunoo, said the bank's contribution in the health sector was its social and environmental responsibility to improve the health needs of the people as they would need healthy workers and customers to deal with.

He said in 2007, the Bank in conjunction with Sight Savers undertook similar projects in the Western and Eastern Regions to save the sights of one million people in the country and hoped to extend it to other parts of the country.

Mr Duah Oyinka, Eastern Regional Administrator of Health Services, said the Ghana Health Service would continue to collaborate with NGOs, benevolent organizations and other donor agencies to provide the needed infrastructure, logistics, personnel and equipment to provide quality health care to the people.

He advised the people in the area to make use of the facility to reduce the high rate of eye diseases in the country. In an address read on his behalf, the Kwahu West Municipal Chief Executive, Mr Alex Obeng Somuah, said it was disheartening to observe that since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals, Ghanaians had continued to die from diseases that could be prevented as a result of ignorance, poverty, illiteracy, cultural and religious beliefs which acted as impediments hindering their access to health care. May 15, 2010