Providing eye care for the disabled
Domestic and international experts gathered in Hanoi on April 10 for a seminar on providing eye care for people with disabilities.
The event brought together representatives from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, the Hanoi Disabled People’s Association, ORBIS, the Fred Hollows Foundation, ICEE and Ausaid.
The seminar, organized by the Vietnam National Institute of Ophthalmology (VNIO) and the Christoffel Blinden Mission (CMB), aimed to encourage disabled people to access eye care services. Due to social discrimination, many disabled people do not take part in community activities, including medical check-ups.
According to the Vietnam National Coordinating Council on Disability (NCCD), there is unknown number of disabled people in Vietnam, especially those living in remote and mountainous areas, accessible to eye care services.
The General Statistics Office of Vietnam reported that Vietnam had 12.2 million disabled people in 2010, accounting for 15.5 percent of the population.
Participants at the seminar discussed difficulties and obstacles in providing communal eye care services, particularly for the disabled, such as a lack of doctors and equipment at the grass-root level, poor infrastructure at local hospitals, and no special policies for disabled and poor people.
They also reviewed CBM’s “Avoidable Blindness Initiative” (ABI) implemented in Son La and Nghe An provinces and pointed out the challenges and difficulties that were faced trying to offer eye care to disabled people in these two provinces.
All initiatives and proposals from the seminar will be sent to the Ministry of Health and relevant agencies to ensure that everyone, including the disabled, have equal access to eye care services in the future.