‘Africa has substantial burden of glaucoma’

Dr. Winston Ceesay made this disclosure on Thursday at a presser convened to mark World Glaucoma Week held at Sheikh Zayed Regional Eye Care Centre (SZRECC), in Kanifing. The theme for this year’s event is -‘Uniting for a Glaucoma Free World’..

Dr. Ceesay noted that the week of campaign seeks to bring communities worldwide to fight glaucoma blindness, further hinting that the risk factors include age, gender, myopia, genetics, family history, smoking, race, systemic hypotension and hypertension, use of systemic or tropical steroids, migraine, obstructive sleep syndrome among a host of others.

He revealed that in 2024, 1004 cases of glaucoma were diagnosed at SZRECC but most of them are on treatment, noting that most of the time, glaucoma patients are unaware of any vision loss, further reminding that vision loss from glaucoma is silent, it is slow, it is progressive and  irreversible, but it is treatable.

On the global level, he added; “In 2020, the number of people estimated to have glaucoma was 76 million and this is expected to increase to 95.5 million in 2030. In 2020, 3.6 million people globally were blind due to glaucoma and it caused 11% of all global blindness in adults aged 50 years and older.  By the year 2040, it is estimated that there will be 22 million individuals worldwide who will go blind due to glaucoma.”

He revealed that currently, there are about 80 million people worldwide with glaucoma, noting that about half of the people who have glaucoma do not even know it.

The prevalence of glaucoma, he added, varies among different nations and regions.

“It appears to be highest among persons of African descent (ranging from 6.5% to 7.3%). Africa is one of the continents with substantial burden of glaucoma.”

The prevalence of glaucoma in Africa, he observed, is twice that of global prevalence, noting that people of African descent are five times more likely to develop glaucoma and six times more likely to go blind from the eye disease.

“Yet 90% of people of African descent do not know that they are living with the disease. In Africa, only 1 in 20 is aware that he or she is living with glaucoma. Often times, 50% of the people would have lost vision in one eye at presentation to the clinic.”

However, the good news, he said, is that this eye disease can be screened, diagnosed and treated here in The Gambia.

The CEO of SZRECC noted that they have all the equipment and the expertise needed for the diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma, since most of the equipment have been in use for almost a decade now.

To continue the battle to prevent Glaucoma blindness, Dr. Ceesay calls for urgent replacement of some of their worn-out equipment as most of them are no longer in production and hence very expensive to replace their parts, when faulty or broken down. 

In addition, he revealed that some of this decade long equipment were donated by partners and called on partners and donors to come to their assistance in their quest to end blindness due to glaucoma in the Gambia.