By Christiana Ekpa
Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu has said that the national eyecare centre act will be amended to provide for the establishment of more centres across the country.
He also said that more institutes are needed to cater for the training of more professionals in optical sector just as he agreed that optometrists should be included in the primary healthcare services at the rural communities.
Kalu made the disclosures during a courtesy call on him by the executives of the Nigerian Optometric Association (NOA) led by their president, Dr. Chimeziri Anderson over the weekend.
The association was in Kalu’s office to canvass for support on the amendment of the relevant acts to provide for the establishment of more eye care centres, the training of more professionals and their inclusion in the primary health care delivery.
They expressed concern over relevance of the extant law guiding their practice, saying it has since lost touch with current realities and as such, needed to be rejigged.
Kalu while underscoring the need for health security added that the centres will be spread in line with the federal character principle of the country.
The Deputy Speaker who recently conducted a medical outreach where over 1000 persons with various degrees of eye problems were treated also recalled sponsoring the amendment bill of the Optometrists and Dispensing Opticians Registration Council Act (Repeal and Enactment) Bill to allow for more efficiency.
He said: “I agree with you that the laws around our eye care are obsolete. The society is dynamic so are the problems. Laws are made to be solutions. Laws are made not to be stimulators of problems.
“The primary healthcare act is not sufficient and I agree with you. Gone are the days when issues about the eyes were considered tertiary. They are primary and should be treated as such if the needed health impact that this administration seeks to achieve must be achieved in the Renewed Hope agenda of President Bola Tinubu who is seeking for health security in our country.
“You’re the second person mentioning this, that Abia should push for national eye center. Someone said that in an engagement with me the other day and then, you’re re-echoing it today. We will go for the amendment of the National Eye Center Act. We are going to put mechanisms in place to push for the establishment of national eye centre. So, we will go for the amendment of the National Eye Centre Act to include Abia.
“While we seek to do that, we will also insist that the need to have more institutions in the other parts of the country especially the south west which is where the president comes from and the other northern parts, in fact, the need cannot be over emphasized. If we are going to have better provision for the eye care service, we must have improvement of skilled professionals in that space which you don’t get on the streets. You get them from institutions and the need has arisen for us to build some more.”
