Children Urged To Take Good Care Of Their Eyes

Eric Owusu Gyimah, Chief Executive Officer of Kog Krations, a Tema based Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) has called on Ghanaian children to take very good care of their eyes as it serves as the light of the body.

According to him, there are a number of eye diseases that plague children in this country mainly because they do not know how to take good care of the eye, saying the human eye cannot be replaced and therefore we must all take good care of it.

He advised the children not to be playing with objects with sharp pointed edges, which according to him could inflict permanent damages to their eyes.

He made the call when he addressed a section of the media at the Efua Sutherland Park over the weekend as part of a programme organized by the NGO to celebrate this year’s World Sight Day (WSD).

Several hundreds of children from across the Greater Accra Region trooped to the popular children’s park at the heart of Accra to have their eyes screened and have fun as well.

Other events the children engaged themselves with included; bouncing castles, chorographies, rap songs, dancing competition, quiz (avoidable blindness/vision impairment related issues) competitions among others.

Some deserving children won prizes for their sterling performances in the cheorography, dancing competition and quiz among others.

About 16 ophthalmologists from public health institutions across Accra including; the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital turned up at the place to offer free eye screening services and also, advised the children who availed themselves for the exercise.

Representatives of partners of the NGO, including the Ghana Education Service (GES), Ghana Health Services (GHS) and American Eye Foundation as well as other volunteers were present to ensure that the programme was successful.

The 2007 Ghana Music Awards (GMA) overall Best Artiste of the Year winner, King Ayisoba and a host of other musicians turned up at the venue to add more entertainment to make the children feel at home.

Addressing the media, Mr. Gyimah said: “Our aim is to create awareness about avoidable blindness or vision impairment and also to screen the eyes of the children to enable them know their eye status”.

The NGO, which has been authorized by the Ghana Education Service and Ghana Health Service to embark on an annual free eye screening projects in basic schools across the countryhas been doing this since 2012.

With support from the Eye Foundation of America and other organizations, KogKrationz, has so far visited 277 schools in six regions in the Greater Accra, Eastern, Ashanti, Western, Central and Western.

Continuing, Mr. Gyimah noted: “Some of the students from the various schools we visited had severe eye problems, which according to teachers had contributed to their recently poor performances in their examinations.

“Over the past years, we have registered children with suspicious disc (glaucoma) for the NHIS, provided lens to correct refractive error of some of the children and provided drugs for allergies for others”.