By Palma Ileye
International Development Organisation, Sightsavers Nigeria, has disclosed that worldwide, more than one billion persons were suffering from different forms of Neglected Tropical Diseases, NTDs, stating that Nigeria has 28 per cent of Africa NTDs burden at the moment.
This was disclosed by Country Director, Sightsavers Nigeria and Ghana, Dr Isiyaku Sunday during a Two-Day workshop organised by Sightsavers for Media Partners in Keffi, Nasarawa State.
Isiyaku noted that River Blindness also know as Onchocerciases, was almost reaching elimination adding that 28 million people in Nigeria no longer needed treatment for the disease saying the same for trachoma of about 3.5 million people.
Though, he said that there were still over 20 NTDs cases and Sightsavers was focused eradicating onchocerciasis or river blindness, elephantiasis or filariasis, parasitic worms or intestinal worms, schistosomiasis, considered a disease associated with either pain or blood coming out while urinating and trachoma NTDs.
He said that the goal of Sightsavers Nigeria was to ensure that NTDs ceased to be a public health issue.
Speaking on the importance of the training, the Country Director said that it has trained no fewer than 25 journalists from North Central Nigeria on eye health, Neglected Tropical Diseases, NTDs and social inclusion emphasizing that the objective of the training was to partner the media on the importance of eye health, NTDs and social inclusion.
He said, “We are an international organisation focusing on ensuring that no one is needlessly blind and persons with disabilities have access to equal services. So we focus on health, education and social inclusion mainly of persons living with disabilities, gender and women.
“Our activities involve provision of drugs through Community Health Centers to ensure that NTDs are no longer a public health concern. So we need a system whereby any child that has a disability is able to have access to mainstream schools like others.
“A system whereby anybody who has an eye condition have access to eye health services with the best technology, infrastructure and all the five NTDs diseases are no longer a public health issue in Nigeria.”
On challenges, he said, “There are challenges of insecurity that is affecting programmes. With various trends of insecurity in the country. On community reach out, you have situations where States cannot manage some of these diseases, hence this diseases resurface, also insufficient reportage, challenges of partnership.”
He also stated that persons who were disabled or with disabilities do not need special treatment but equal access to public institutions, jobs, places of worship, schools among others.
Stressing that the society needed to create enabling environment for all human beings to live together without necessarily treating others specially because of their disability.
“We are also involved in inclusive education, our activities involves ensuring that the mainstream education for children include people with disabilities. No need for special schools for people living with disabilities.
“These children after education are coming into a society that does not differentiate between people with disabilities and those without. Most people with disabilities do not need special treatment. All they want is to be treated as human beings.
“We live in a society were people living with disability are completely stigmatized due to lack of awareness, so we need the media to help us in awareness creation for the benefit of all. Government should be able to provide consumables, they need Government support which they have not really gotten in many States. Hence the use of this advocacy as all of this is about treatment not people,” he added.
Furthermore, he harped on the need for Government, societies, employers and institutions should ensure that they create accessibility for persons with disability so they can be socially included in the society.
Also, Program Officer at Sightsavers, Dr Joshua Ibenu, said that over 2.2 billion people in the world, have some visual impairment which was either total or partial blindness or of blurred images adding that one billion have impairment that has not been attended to in any form of which these vision impairment could have been prevented.
Ibenu said that more than 61 percent of Nigerians have one form of eye problem to the other, saying that Sightsavers have supported 80 per cent of trachoma treatment in Nigeria in the over 30 years of their existence.
He said, “The amount of development impaired persons can give summounts to 4.11 billion Dollars and non treatment, leads to a reduction in productivity and this is estimated to cost 5 billion Dollars globally. 85 percent of most blind cases are as a result of avoidable causes and are unavoidable. Some challenges of eye health includes; policies, as of 2019, there was no comprehensive eye health policy. It was only launched last year, in 2022. It domestication in various States, human resources, evidence generation, service delivery and others.”
He listed the major causes of blindness in Nigeria to include Cataract, Glaucoma, Trachoma, cornea opacity, and uncorrected refractive errors adding that many of the blindness resulting from these causes could be prevented if detected early.
In the same vein, Mr David Okoroafor, Project Officer, Economic Empowerment, Sightsavers, in his paper titled “Promoting Disability Rights,” said that more than one billion people worldwide were living with disability, with many of them being low income earners.
Okoroafor said there was need for social inclusion by correcting the stigma associated with people living with disabilities saying that around the world, many people with disabilities were not included and Sightsavers has helped to increase their participation through social inclusion so that they could be financially stable.
He said that, “Most people with disability suffer because of bottleneck policies in Nigeria. At Sightsavers, we help so that they can be involved as citizens as every day life involves them. Through citizenship and social participation, advocacy no to exclude them. This also extends to protecting the Rights of Women and Girls because they are vulnerable to attacks and sexual harassment. We work with behaviour changes to include people with disability to remove misconception and promote health programs and economic empowerment.”
According to him, schools should be built to accommodate all children irrespective of their physical conditions and this was achievable as demonstrated in Jema’a Local Government Area of Kaduna State through their Support Mainstreaming Inclusion for all to Learn Equal, SMILE Project.
Esther Bature, Sightsavers, Country Advocacy said that the training was meant to ensure efficient and effective reportage of eye health related issues, NTDs and social inclusion as well as educating the media to change the narrative on the need for the world to create enabling environment for children living with disabilities to have equal access to mainstream schools without hindrance.
