Glaucoma Awareness Being Promoted

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What Ails You

Saturday, 02 March 2013 02:30

By Delana Isles

Antigua St. John's - Several support groups and organisations will, on March 16, come together for a March to help raise awareness about glaucoma in Antigua and Barbuda.

Member of a local patient support group, Dr. Salem Zreibi told Caribarena that the group hopes to educate people about the disease which is very prevalent in Antigua and Barbuda. He added that the group takes part in the March every year just to get the message out so that people can recognise the importance of getting tested.

Glaucoma refers to a group of eye conditions that lead to damage to the optic nerve. This nerve carries visual information from the eye to the brain and in most cases damage to the optic nerve is due to increased pressure in the eye.

The Optometrist said that though there are no precise statistics regarding the incidence of the glaucoma in Antigua, they do know that it is one which afflicts many people in the country.

“The problem is high in people of African descent and with family history, so if you have someone in your family who has glaucoma, then there is a 20% chance that you too might have glaucoma.”
He noted that every eye examination should have a glaucoma test in it.

“The thing with glaucoma is there are no early symptoms for it, so you would never go in to a doctor’s office and say I think I have glaucoma, most of the times if you do get sick with it, it is already in the middle stages.”

He said the aim is to catch the disease in its early stages, “Because when you have glaucoma, whatever you lose from the disease you cannot get back so the whole idea is to get people to be checked early so that we can catch the glaucoma in its early stages and prevent any further damage and blindness.”

Dr. Zreibi advised that everyone should get their eyes checked every one to two years, but that the likelihood of glaucoma is very high when someone is over 40 but this does not mean it is exclusive to people over 40.

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“It is a peripheral vision lost you and we are not so keen on peripheral vision, we are more into central vision so it’s very difficult for us to pinpoint that we’re actually losing vision from the side and this disease is very gradual,” he explained.

According to the doctor, the Prime Minister will be joining the support group along with several other medical and civil organisations on the March 16 parade in St. John’s.

World Glaucoma week will be celebrated from March 10 – 16 and will be observed with a series of activities.

In a press statement from the World Glaucoma Patient Association President and President of the Antigua/Barbuda Glaucoma Support Group, Dr. Jillia Bird observed that glaucoma is a disease which affects all communities in all countries around the world.

In the English-speaking Caribbean, the 1990’s Barbados Eye Studies found prevalence rates of Open Angle Glaucoma (OAG) by self-reported race to be 7.0% in black, 3.3% in mixed-race, and 0.8% in white or other participants in the over 50 age group.

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