Government, N.G.O. unite to improve eye care
With a bright sun, dusty roads, and large expanses of glare producing water, Belize is not exactly a nurturing environment for eyes. All the more reason then, to take extra care. News Five’s Janelle Chanona reports on an important collaboration that aims to have us seeing twenty-twenty.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
San Pedrana Judith Arceo is one of the more than fifteen thousand Belizeans that will visit the National Eye Clinic this year.
Judith Arceo, Eye Patient
“Well right now I really can’t see good. But if they help me, well I’m–that’s the point, I want to see.”
Using the latest in medical equipment, optometrist Omar Ceballos carefully examines Arceo’s eyes.
Omar Ceballos, Optometrist
“We normally see glaucoma, cataracts, teregions, we do the eye examinations. We normally see patients, about ten to fifteen patients for the day, or maybe twenty. And in this case, you can see that Ms. Judith has a cataract in both eyes and she’ll need to get a surgery. … We do it here in Belize; we do everything here at the clinic.”
The National Eye Clinic is the main examination, medication, and surgery section of the Belize Council for the Visually Impaired.
Joan Musa, Dir., Belize Council for Visually Impaired
“The mission of B.C.V.I. is to have a country where nobody is needlessly blind.”
According to B.C.V.I. Director Joan Musa, the council offers a free and comprehensive primary eye care programme to every Belizean in an effort to prevent blindness. If the preliminary visit reveals the need for glasses or surgery, B.C.V.I. provides the service at an affordable cost. The N.G.O. has compensated for limited resources by partnering with international organisations as well as the Ministries of Health and Education. Today the B.C.V.I. and the Ministry of Health reaffirmed their joint goals by signing a new memorandum of understanding.
Joan Musa
“I think it’s a very significant partnership and the Ministry definitely puts in their side of the resources, but we can also bring to the table various resources. And this is why we also took the opportunity of signing today when one of our major partners is here today, Sight Savers International. They are based in the United Kingdom; they were instrumental through the Caribbean Council for the Blind for getting B.C.V.I. started in 1981.”
Jose Coye, Minister of Health
”If we as a government and as a state can work together with the social partners, our limited resources can make health affordable to all; it can. We can maximize. The synergy that comes from that co-relation is amazing when we tap into people who are working, not driven by a profit, but driven by the welfare of the people.”
But where does this arrangement leave private eye care providers?
Joan Musa
“There are certain services that we don’t provide. For example, our range of prescribed glasses, we don’t do the fancier ones like the transitions or the progressive, because it’s a small number of people. That is where you would make more money. We don’t do contact lenses. We don’t do Lasik surgery, this type of thing. So if people ask for this, we tell them who the other providers are, they are perfectly welcome to go to them. And sometimes if our resources run out, we borrow from them and they borrow from us. Dr. Hoy might need an interlocutory lens; Dr. Valdes might need a certain type of laser. We have a relationship where we do work and share resources.”
B.C.V.I. conducts cataract removals on a daily basis, offers the common laser surgery for glaucoma cases, and even does the occasional cornea transplant. But the medical experts agree that Belizeans need to start taking better care of their bodies.
Dr. Juan Carlos Reyes, Ophthalmic Surgeon
“Talking about hypertension, high blood pressure, and diabetes those are the most, there is a lack of awareness in the public about those types of diseases that can affect the eyes and make the people get blind. Cataracts, we will look for in the clinics, but in the public people have to have better eating habits to avoid diabetes and high blood pressure.”
Jose Coye, Minister of Health
“Today we are seeing what is happening given our lifestyles, given the type of dieting that we are not supposed to be involved in, the modernity of our lives today is bringing on the chronic diseases on us, what we eat, the lack of aerobic exercise, the smoking, the abuse of alcoholic beverages, the trauma on the roads, the traffic accidents. So more and more the Ministry of Health understands the shifting of the strategy; we need to—while not in anyway diminishing the approach to the communicable diseases—the preventative approach, we need to integrate it and strengthen the prevention through health education.”
According to Sight Savers International, there are currently two hundred and fifty million people who are needlessly blind. Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona.
