Ophthalmology in Nigeria: Challenges and Success

There are inadequate human resources for eye care in Africa compared to other parts of the world, which make it unrealistic for most of these African countries to achieve VISION 2020 target by the year 2020. The few eye care service providers in Africa are maldistributed. They are more in the urban areas, leaving most of the rural population uncared. The experience is not different in Nigeria, as most of the human resources for eye care are mainly concentrated in the cities, the western and the oil-rich southern parts of the country. Family Physicians, who are doctors of first contact, have difficulty in referring patients who need specialist eye care services because of the challenge of dearth of eye specialist near their vicinity of practice. For the achievement of universal eye health coverage, emphasis needs to be on developing the human resources sector through effective planning.