NGO Seeks Funding For Eye Healthcare

Sightsavers Nigeria, a non-governmental organisation, has called for much funds to supply prime oculus healthcare/services and destruct Neglected Tropical Diseases, NTDs, for millions of Nigerians.

The telephone was made during the two-day Media Partners gathering held successful Keffi, Nasarawa State, organised by Sightsavers Nigeria for Journalists crossed the North Central Regions, Kogi, FCT, Benue, Kwara, Niger, Nasarawa and Plateau States.

Speaking arsenic the Country Director of Sightsavers Nigeria, Prof. Joy Shuaibu, noted that the gathering aimed to equip journalists with the indispensable accusation to amplify messages successful the combat against avoidable blindness.

She explained that Sightsavers Nigeria has impacted astir 60 per cent of Nigeria’s colonisation done its assorted interventions.

“In gathering collaboration betwixt the organisation and the government, she said that consciousness connected the preventive measures and cure of NTDs has received a boost successful prevalent areas, affirming that Nigeria was astir to flooded trachoma, which was 1 of the starring causes of blindness speech from glaucoma and cataracts, she said.”

Shuaibu charged the media to amplify issues astir NTDs, promote ownership of projects by the government, adjacent the backing gap, and instrumentality policies that volition code challenges affecting entree to healthcare and acquisition for PWDs.

She noted the organisation’s efforts successful tackling the 5 large NTDs affecting Nigerians, specified arsenic Lymphatic Filariasis, River Blindness, Soil-transmitted Helminths, Schistosomiasis, and Trachoma, which collectively interaction tens of millions, peculiarly successful agrarian and underserved communities.

She added that arsenic of 2024, Sightsavers has delivered implicit 653 cardinal treatments nationwide, supported 147 Local Government Areas to halt therapy for Elephantiasis, and helped 9 States interrupt River Blindness transmission, with 2 achieving implicit elimination.

“We besides supported 174 Local Government Areas to scope the trachoma elimination threshold and provided 80 per cent enactment for trachoma elimination successful Nigeria.

“These figures are not conscionable statistics; they correspond lives restored, families rebuilt, and communities freed from diseases that erstwhile defined them,” she said.

Outlining Sightsavers’ societal inclusion portfolio, she mentioned a four-pronged attack to inclusion, including Citizenship and Political Participation, Economic Empowerment, Inclusive Health, and the Promotion of the Rights of Women and Girls with Disabilities.

Shuaibu further stressed that “Persons with disabilities should not lone beryllium seen but heard. And they indispensable beryllium portion of the decisions that signifier their communities.”