Prevalence Of Glaucoma In Nigeria

Abstract

Glaucoma, a disease that damages the optic nerve represents a major cause of vision loss throughout the world. Globally, about 314 million people are visually impaired while 45 million of them are blind with 87% of the visually impaired living in the developing countries. The global target of WHO in Vision 2020 which is the “right to sight initiative” is ultimately to reduce blindness prevalence to less than 0.5% in all countries or less than 1% in any community. This study was aimed to find out the prevalence of glaucoma in Nigeria from 1998-2006. The National Eye Centre Kaduna, Nigeria, a collaborating centre of WHO in the prevention of blindness on patients who presented to the hospital with the condition from 1998-2006 was used for the study. The instruments used during the course of this research work for data collection were the primary source which was directly from ward register, primary health care clinic and registers from consulting clinics obtained from the medical record department. A total of 7573 patients were used for the purpose of the study. Out of this total, 4876 patients were male representing 63% while 2789 patients were female representing 37%. Age distribution showed that the prevalence of Glaucoma is higher between ages 40 years and above with 3202 patients representing 43% followed by age 3140 with 2792 patients representing 37%. The yearly distribution of glaucoma was 330 patients in 1998 representing 4% and 1680 patients representing 23% in 2006 indicating an increase in the prevalence of Glaucoma.