Photo( Above) MICEI CEO Dr Henry Nkumbe and CBM Cameroon country director Julius Fon, sign partnership agreement.
(Below) Presenting one of the rare paediatric opthamologist in Cameroon Dr Afetane Evina
By Ngalame Elias
Cameroon in particular and Central African sub-region in general face a severe shortage of eye health specialists. According to experts, high rates of preventable blindness persist; especially among children due to lack of trained specialists subspecialty care.
Statistics from the Maghrabi ICO Eye Institute in Cameroon shows that about 10% of people suffering from blindness globally are children. Without targeted human resource development and equipment strengthening, the growing burden of eye disease in the Central African sub-region; particularly paediatric; cannot be effectively addressed.
It is against this backdrop that the Magrabi ICO Cameroon Eye Institute (MICEI) and the Christian Blind Mission, CBM have embarked on a specialized training project P10925 “ Reinforcing Eye Care human resource capacity to deliver specialised eye Care in Cameroon,” a high quality sub-specialty training supported by a three years structured framework.
Health experts say with the alarming increase in childhood blindness in Cameroon in particular and the Central African region in general, primarily due to congenital cataracts and glaucoma, the training project P10925 will help strengthen specialized ophthalmological care.
“ Our focus in Paediatric ophthalmology training is to increase the number of specialists to better take care of the growing number of children blindness. The tragedy here is that unlike adults who may live just few years of blindness, children may live with it for longer years. The burden of living with blindness for children is much heavier,” Dr Henry Nkumbe, CEO of MICEI said at the signing ceremony.
Photo shows ( above) Project team, ( below) Some top MICEI staff at the ceremony
The project according to Dr Henry Nkumbe, strengthens both supply (trained specialists) and demand (patient access).
“The advance training in clinical and surgical skills is a milestone project to strengthen eye care professionals and enhance eye health services in Cameroon and beyond,” he said.
For CBM Cameroon country director Julius Fon, the increasing children blindness is a call for concern, necessitating concrete action.
“ CBM has been working in partnership with MICEI for a long time. For this project we have a program advisory team to ensure the quality of training meet international standards, design programs and mobilize resources to respond to these needs,” he said.
Presenting the project, Ndi Kennedy Ngi of Programs AEF/MICEI,said the objectives were to enhance the provision of inclusive tertiary eye care in Cameroon through human resource capacity development and increased access to tertiary services by all, establish MICEI as the leading sub-regional training hub in tertiary ophthalmology — paediatric ophthalmology, glaucoma, medical and vitreoretinal — with a strong focus on paediatric ophthalmology.
The project is expected at the end to train
1 ophthalmologist – surgical paediatric, 1 ophthalmologist – clinical paediatric, 3 persons in trabeculectomy, 2 persons in orthoptics, 2 persons in ocular imaging.
Accordingly, Magrabi ICO Cameroon Eye Institute (MICEI) is an ophthalmology sub-specialty hospital offering high-quality subspecialty eye care (retina, glaucoma, uveitis) and training in the Central African region.
One of Cameroon’s best paediatric ophtamologists, Dr Afetane Evina, serving at MICEI.
