Kaduna hospital battling to save Nigerian eyes
Chizarom Azodoh is a 16-yearold boy from Owerri, Imo State who was born with cataract. Since his birth, majority of his life has been spent chasing a cure for his blindness. conditions that affect this part of the eye,” he said.
“Many people were coming to India for different types of eye surgeries and that informed the decision by Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Institute to establish the center jointly with Thelish Eye Centre in Kaduna so as to reduce medical tourism.
“Otherwise if these people are to go to India, the air travel, the accommodation, visa and so on, would have cost them a fortune,” he said.
The transplant is becoming quite a regular fit for him as the centre conducts between six and seven operations every month.
“We had developed a technique called Glued IoL which is used where we cannot fix the lens in a patient in normal circumstances, especially cases like injuries, some defects or lack of proper support of the lens,” he said.
But like the doctors, the cornea required for the transplant are also imported, from Chicago, and these helps in making the surgery quite expensive. But the doctors said the technology of the surgery is pretty standard whether in India, the US or Nigeria.
Cases of cornea transplant are fairly common in Nigeria as a result of infections or injuries.
“In some cases, blasts and sharp metals that enter the eye, mess it up and the lens cannot be put properly. In such cases, we fix the lens with specialized glue- the human glue made of human blood,” he said.
For the young doctor, there is a lot to be done in Nigeria. For the patients who need the help available at the centre, they might just be able to glimpse the light at the end of the long, dark tunnel. And it is closer to home than they imagined.