Health for free cataract surgery across the country is now a subject of
controversy among ministry officials, the office of the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) and the Ophthalmological Society of Nigeria (OSN).
An authoritative source told the Nigerian
Compass that the money has disappeared mysteriously.
The idea for a cataract reduction programme was
formulated by the OSN which promoted it vigorously before the MDGs office
agreed to fund the free surgery programme.
Tagged: “Special Programme for the Elimination
of Cataracts or SPECS”, a Ministry source insisted that the idea became
imperative because while one out of every 200 Nigerians is blind from
cataracts, the country has one of the lowest Cataract Surgical Rates (CSR),
“mainly because poor people cannot afford to pay for the procedure.”
The source added: “OSN was concerned that only
about 300 cataract surgeries per million population per year is carried out in
Nigeria, compared with over 3000 in India. This means there are so many
hundreds of thousands of Nigerians requiring cataract surgery and not getting
it. This is the so-called “cataract backlog”.
Based on the advocacy efforts of the Society,
the MDG under Hajiya Amina Az-Zubair (the former Senior Special Assistant, SSA,
to the President on MDGs) approved the cataract reduction project, but opted to
utilise the Federal Ministry of Health as the executing agency.
This was opposed to the initial plan to make the
funds available either directly to the society or to the National Eye Centre
(NEC) in Kaduna.
The MDG, under the new SSA, Dr. Precious Kalamba
Gbeneol, carried forward the plan to implement this project.
The fund, according to investigations, was
released early last year and lodged in one of the accounts of the ministry
while officials tried to determine how best to utilise it. As at the last
check, however, the fund could no longer be accounted for.
An angry ministry official told this newspaper
that keeping the money idle for one year was a mistake, as “it has now been
completely misappropriated while not a single cataract surgery has been
undertaken as at today”.
An official of OSN who also lamented the
development said “the programme had the potential of boosting the esteem of the
Federal Government in the eyes of the long-suffering Nigerian populace. It
would have been a major achievement of the Jonathan administration,
particularly as it relates to the much-vaunted transformation agenda of the
President.
An Associate Professor of ophthalmology and the
immediate Past President of the OSN, Dr. Femi Babalola who spoke with our
correspondent on the issue, confirmed that indeed some funds were released by
MDG department for cataract surgery.
According to him, shortly after the money was
given to the Ministry during the first quarter of 2012, officials of the
Ministry invited OSN representatives to offer advice on how best to utilise the
funds.
“A meeting was held with Ministry officials last
December, attended by the current president of the OSN, Dr. Kunle Hassan; the
Director of the National Eye Centre in Kaduna, Dr. Godwin Adejor; the
Coordinator of the National Blindness Prevention Programme, Dr. Uwaez
Onyebuchi; Dr. Babalola the IPP of the OSN, and others.
“A plan was submitted to the Ministry for
implementation and I heard the Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi has approved
that the cataract programme be rolled out. Unfortunately, the funds are now
nowhere to be found.”
Babalola advised that efforts should be made to
recover the funds and that in future, the funds should be domiciled at the
National Eye Center (NEC) in Kaduna and jointly administered by the OSN and the
NEC.
