"Professor Kovin Naidoo, from the Brien Holden Vision Institute and also representative of Optometry Giving Sight;
Dr Matthew Alpert, VSP Global Board Member;
Jill Novelo, Manager VSP Global Public Relations;
Mr Grant Oyle, Managing Director of Just-Eye wear;
Soccer Legends and Arties from different genre of entertainment present;
Ward Councilor, Mr Vusi Shongwe, and other Local Councillors present;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
It is fitting that we launch this project when we commemorate 21 years of the dastard killing of Chris Hani.
Through-out his life he struggled for attainment of socialism which among other things meant to him access to quality health care for the majority of our people who remain medically un-insured. The African National Congress prioritised school health services long before it came to power in 1994.
We have always been aware that poor eyesight among school going children is also a barrier to learning. In the olden days poor eyesight among school-going children contributed to a high number of learners dropping out of school because they were incorrectly classified as “dom”.
The national Department of Health estimates that over 80% of the population depends upon public health care. This means that over 41 million people rely on only 229 public-sector optometrists to provide them with the necessary eye care!
Of this group, 15 million are children under the age of 15. Consequently the majority of South African children still have extremely limited access to any form of eye health services.
Through-out the world, and also in our country, the number of people blind due to avoidable causes of blindness like cataract, refractive error and glaucoma is increasing every year.
Gauteng Department of Health has thus decided to embark on a drive to educate the people of our province on the importance of eye health and screening in order to avoid complications resulting from poor eye care.
As part of Integrated School Health Services we will have already deployed more than 21 nurses who are trained in eye screening. These nurses will identify learners who need to been by an optometrist at the nearest clinic where eye care services are available.
Program Director,
Integrated School Health Services are a key component of Re-engineering of Primary Health Care services. The aim of this programme is to improve children’s health, reduce health barriers to learning, and to assist learners to stay in school and perform to the best of their abilities. The programme will deliver health screening, on-site services and health education on school premises.
This will allow children access to health promotion and health services during their formative years and thus enhancing the quality of their lives.
If learners require made-to-order spectacles they will be referred free of charge to a private laboratory which provides the Department with such spectacles at cost. I want to emphasise that this will be at no cost to learners!
We also aim to create and increase awareness among the people of Soweto about available eye services and to educate and screen for any eye conditions they might be having. Early detection of eye conditions leads to early intervention and it is crucial in preventing complications and or even unnecessary blindness.
As the Gauteng Department of Health, we value our partnership with VSP Global, Nike, and Brien Holden Vision Institute as this will strengthen and develop capacity of existing government structures to deliver eye care screening services through the Child Eye Health Project in Soweto.
We have been assured that over a 3 year period, this Project will support us to provide eye health services to an estimated 30 000 children in Soweto and reduce the percentage of school children with uncorrected visual impairment by 90% with a view to improve the quality of the children’s lives and educational performance.
The Eye Clinic that we are also opening today here at the Nike Training Centre will provide training to teachers in health promotion, school health nurses in primary eye health care, and optometrists in paediatric optometry.
It will also serve as a referral centre for eye screenings in schools by School Health Nurses, project optometrists and volunteer optometrists. It will also provide optometry equipment and frames.
Our approach to eye screening that is targeted to school children is borne by our findings that it is less costly to treat minor causes of vision loss than to wait until a person is blind and then try to restore vision because by then the service is very expensive.
We are now bridging the gap of poor early detection and screening at community level for eye diseases.
We hope that this launch will serve as an ideal platform to inform the general public, health care professionals, policy makers about the strong link between basic eye care and blindness.
Community awareness and education, and prevention are the core of primary health care. We hope that this intervention will improve communities’ knowledge of their eye conditions and thus prevent the onset of the disease. By extending eye- screening to the undiagnosed we will be able to control eye disease and enable our people to live full and healthy lives.
Pogramme Director,
Statistics indicate that at least 50% of all people with eye problems are unaware of their condition. The prevalence of eye related systemic diseases like diabetes and hypertension is rising at an alarming rate and is contributing to the increase of eye complications.
We therefore encourage our communities to undergo eye testing at least once in two years in order to prevent blindness. We are also aware that short sightedness is now a very common condition in children due to physical inactivity, especially obese children whose vision is limited to spending inordinate hours watching television programs.
We therefore urge parents and guardians to monitor the period that spent by children watching television on a daily basis. Spending long hours watching television is associated with indulgence in unhealthy diet consisting of junk food or “spy kos” because the viewer does not want to spend time preparing a healthy meal.
Parents have a responsibility to encourage their children to engage in gainful physical activity especially after school instead of spending hours in front of television sets.
We have employed a total of 37 Optometrists through- out Gauteng to conduct eye screening and refractions; in addition we have appointed four district based ophthalmic nurses. All clinics providing eye care have and follow the National Department of Health guidelines on prevention of blindness are available in the facilities.
Once more I take this opportunity to tank all our partners for working with us to pull our resources together in order to improve the health of our children most of whom would have been condemned to a lifetime of either poor eye sight or even blindness.
