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Expert seeks intensive eye care for N’Delta

By Alemma-Ozioruva Aliu, Benin City
24 December 2015   |   10:35 pm
THE federal and state governments have been charged to invest heavily in rural eye care owing to the perennial environmental degradation in the Niger Delta caused by years of oil exploration without adequate clean ups and checks on hazardous activities.

EyesTHE federal and state governments have been charged to invest heavily in rural eye care owing to the perennial environmental degradation in the Niger Delta caused by years of oil exploration without adequate clean ups and checks on hazardous activities.

An optician, Dr Mejuya Okorodudu, who made the call yesterday while addressing reporters in Benin City, Edo State, said rural dwellers had been worst victims of inadequate health care provision.

Okorodudu, who has been running free medical expeditions across the creeks of Edo and Delta states for five years under the auspices of Africa Cataract and Eye Foundation, said his organisation had performed over 5, 000 eye surgeries, noting that the figure was still very inadequate since the United Nations requires every eye surgeon to perform an average of 1, 500 surgeries yearly in order to eliminate blindness.

The Niger Delta, except you have been here, you cannot really appreciate the magnitude of deprivation, and I have been here because I grew up here. I tend to see the difficulty of my people. A time came when I began to see a lot of wisdom in what my father told me, that I was born in this part of the world for a reason.
“That means, if you have got skills, you must go and share it with your people. I am happy I can do this for them, knowing that most of them don’t have to be blind. They are just blind from needless causes. Some of them have been blind for 15-20 years from simple things that can be reversed,” he said.

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