Ophthalmologists have identified Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), a leading cause of blindness among children in the developed world, as a growing public health concern for Bangladesh. Speaking at a national workshop on ROP in the capital on Saturday (20 Nov), they said approximately 3.8 million babies are born in Bangladesh each year of whom, 438,000 are born pre-term. According to them, a large portion of the pre-term babies face the risk of blindness due to ROP. Also read: KOICA provides online training on eye disease prevention for Ophthalmologists in Bangladesh Directorate General of Health Services’ (DGHS) Director General Prof Dr Abul Bashar Mohammed Khurshid Alam was present at the workshop as the chief guest while Directorate General of Medical Education’s (DGME) Director General Prof AHM Enayet Hussain, also the Chair of IAPB Bangladesh Chapter, presented the keynote paper. DGHS Director Dr Md Shamsul Haque presided over the session while UNICEF Bangladesh Chief Health Dr Sanjana Bhardwaj, Orbis International Bangladesh Country Director Dr Munir Ahmed, and IRD Global Bangladesh Country Director Dr Tapash Roy joined it as the special guests. Prof Md Saifullah from National Eye Care/NIOH and Prof Nazmun Nahar from Ispahani Islamia Eye Institute and Hospital also joined the workshop. The NNHP & IMCI Program of DGHS, with support from DGME, IRD Global, Orbis International and UNICEF, organised the workshop to foster multi-sectorial response and create an enabling coordination platform for the prevention of avoidable childhood blindness due to ROP in Bangladesh. The DGHS director general, in his speech said “ROP is one of the severe problems among premature babies. We’ll try to include ROP in the revised version of Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health Plan operation and in the National Eye Care plan in the near future.” “I believe that the guideline that will be formulated today will prove to be a milestone,” he added. He advised formulation of the guideline considering the fact that some things might be included and some excluded from it. He thanked the obstetrics and gynaecology society for being directly involved in the government’s achievement in the health sector. Also read: icddr,b launches artificial intelligence based diabetic retinopathy detection The keynote presenter while reflecting on IAPB and WHO’s journey of 20 years said, “It was a race against time. We started working on childhood blindness in an organized manner in 2000 by launching Paediatric Ophthalmology Department at the National Institute of Ophthalmology. We started working with two programmes- crash programme and system strengthening.” He further mentioned, “In 2003 we started a programme where we identified children with childhood blindness at the field level and conducted eye surgery on 25,000 children till 2010. So far we have established 22 paediatric ophthalmology centres across the country. Although we could not reach the 0.5 benchmark set by WHO, childhood blindness in the country came down to 0.6 in 2017 from 0.8 in 2003.” He emphasized on strengthening the primary health care services, preventing preterm delivery and ensuring labour room protocol to prevent ROP. Dr Munir Ahmed in his speech as the special guest said, “ROP is a life threatening condition that can be prevented if timely screened and treated. We need to ensure eye screening of children within 20/30 days after their birth. We need to work together in an organized manner to prevent ROP. This workshop aims at validating the collaborative efforts of ROP guidelines.” According to papers presented at the workshop, in 2020 an estimated 1.1 billion people had vision impairment globally, of whom 43.3 million are blind. Referring to global estimates, speakers said one out of every five children has some sort of vision problems globally and that ROP is responsible for some of the problems that occur during childhood and can lead to blindness if untreated. According to the speakers, visual loss not only affects individuals and their families but also the community and country at large, resulting in a greater loss of productivity and taking its toll on the economy.

Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and Inje University Busan Paik Hospital concluded a month-long online capacity building training programme on Thursday. The training programme targeted 23 government ophthalmologists under KOICA-GoB project ‘Eye Health Promotion and Prevention of Blindness in Bangladesh’ with budget US$ 8,450,000. The event was held at Bangladesh Korea Friendship Hospital (BKFH) in Savar in presence of Young Ah-Doh, Country Director, KOICA Bangladesh Office and Prof Dr Md Abdul Quader, Project Director and Professor of Cornea, National Institute of Ophthalmology (NIO) and experts from the Republic of Korea. Also read: KOICA holds de-briefing seminar on capacity building for OSH KOICA’s Country Director hoped that the training helped to strengthen the knowledge and surgical skills of the ophthalmologists in Bangladesh and contributed to the provision of medical services in the ophthalmology clinics in accordance with international standards. KOICA said it is committed to continue its cooperation with Bangladesh to further boost the nation’s eye health related treatment and services. Avoidable blindness is one of the major public health problems in Bangladesh. Also read: KOICA supports Mugda Hospital with ICU, medical supplies in COVID-19 response In terms of statistics, about 5 million people, including children, suffer from refractive errors, about 2.8% of the population aged 35 years and above suffer from glaucoma and 25% of diabetic patients suffer from diabetic retinopathy, according to KOICA. The government of Bangladesh is a signatory of the Vision 2020 (V2020, Right to Sight) initiative of IAPB and WHO and committed to achieve the goal of eliminating avoidable blindness by 2020. KOICA has initiated the mentioned project in collaboration with Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) and National Institute of Ophthalmology (NIO) under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW). Also read: KOICA to help strengthen Bangladesh's road maintenance, management system The main objectives are to, establish an eye care unit at BKFH, contribute to capacity building of eye health personnel, establish vision centers at Savar and Dhamrai Upazila Health Complex (UHC) and Dhaka Export Promotion Zone Hospital (EPZ), promote eye health in target communities and support to develop a new National Eye Care (NEC) Plan.