AS GLAUCOMA CONTINUES to be a major problem in Barbados, which has one of the highest rates of people living with glaucoma in the world, the local eye care sector continues to encourage Barbadians to get screened so that the eye condition, which causes irreversible blindness, can be detected early.
Speaking yesterday at a service to mark the start of World Glaucoma Week at St Paul’s Anglican Church, Bay Street, St Michael, consultant ophthalmologist and glaucoma specialist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Dawn Grosvenor, said that early detection of the chronic condition affecting the nerve to the eye was critical.
She said that Barbados eye studies done in the 1980s and 1990s that screened thousands of Barbadians with various eye diseases, focusing heavily on glaucoma, had concluded that Barbadians were seven per cent at risk of being diagnosed with the condition, compared to two per cent worldwide.
“Every day I see new people who are being screened for glaucoma and every week I personally diagnose somebody with glaucoma. I am not the only eye doctor so every eye doctor is seeing people and diagnosing them with glaucoma. (AH)
