UNBELIVABLE, but it is true the medical doctor became blind due to abuse of Chloroquine, a medicine for the treatment of malaria.
Dr Charles Babatunde, a Spain-trained medical doctor who worked on his return back to Nigeria at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan did not become blind because of his job. The blindness was a consequence of his long term use of Chloroquine, being someone with blood group AA and as such more susceptible to developing malaria.
Having lived abroad from 1968 till 1975, he has lost the resistance he developed while young as a person that grew up in a malaria endemic area. This, also contributed to him experiencing malaria almost every other week and so his continual gulping of the medicine.
Unfortunately, all drugs are toxic when not appropriately used. Over time the drug became deposited in his eye and started to have blurred vision. It took an eye expert for him to link his blurred vision to the malaria medicine.
For Dr Babatunde, who left UCH as a registrar in the O&G Department to establish Ololade Hospital Basorun, Ibadan, his inability to see well was further worsen when he developed glaucoma, a silent thief of sight.
“When glaucoma was diagnosed, I needed to buy glaucoma medications worth N10, 000 every month to prevent becoming blind,” Dr Babatunde said.
Unfortunately for him, his medical practice had started to go down as well because of his poor sight.
Luck was however was on his side as a good Samaritan decided to support the education of his four children through the university as well as gave his wife some money to set up a piggery. But even the piggery business collapsed, thanks to African swine disease.
Dr Babatunde, a 70-year old blind man, said if anything can be done to have his sight restored, he would have gladly done it. But his regret was that he never realised that such a drug as Chloroquine would be the onset of a lifelong woe since he is now completely blind and needs assistance to move around.
Augustine Akpeji, a Junior Secondary School 3 student of Federal Government College, Ija nikin is also blind but for a different reason. He became blind as a baby after he developed eye cancer called retinoblastoma and the two eyes had to be removed.
Augustine, now 16 years old, was discovered to have cancer of the eyes when he was four months old. Although medical doctors advised that he should have an eye operation, for fear, his parents refused and resorted to prayers until they were forced to bring him back to the hospital when his bulging eyes were not receding.
By then, the cancer had done more damage to the eyes. It has spread to the orbits of the eyes, so necessitating their removal and subsequently radiation.
Augustine is a highly gifted individual that can make calls on a cell phone without any assistance, play the piano and work on the computer. But a question that he is always asking people that care to listen is what is it like been able to see.
But blindness or poor sight is not limited to the male gender as evidenced by the plight of Mrs Toyin Afolabi, a mother of two who hails from Osogbo in Osun State.
“I took to begging to get money to eat with the assistance of my son after I could not see again at Bodija market in Ibadan,” recounted Mrs Afolabi.
But Mrs Afolabi, who is 30 years old, was fortunate to meet someone who gave her the address of Eleta Eye Institute, where a kind hearted person at the hospital gave her medicines to control her high blood sugar, which actually caused damage to her eyes as well as made her to realise that she needed surgery to restore her sight.
Courtesy of a donation made by Chief Florence Ajimobi to sponsor cataract surgery in honour of her late mother-in-law, Mrs Afolabi can now see with one of her eyes. But she still needed to have a cataract surgery on her second eye as well as continue to buy medicines to treat her diabetic condition. She had a medical condition called diabetic retinopathy.
The proceeds of her bread sales in Lagos, is a far cry from what she needs to ensure that she could see and live free of other complications of diabetes such as kidney damage. Already the husband had left her after she became blind.
But poor sight need not dim hope for the future, explained by Dr Gboyega Ajayi, the Group Medical Director, Eleta Eye Institute Foundation when giving counsel on , two major causes of blindness, cataract and glaucoma.
According to Dr Ajayi, although both cataract and glaucoma can cause blindness, blindness resulting from cataract is repairable. However, that due to glaucoma is not, thus the need for everybody to ensure they have regular eye checks.
“Cataract accounts for almost 50 per cent of blindness in the world. In most cases, cataract comes with age. Interestingly, in developed countries, almost no one goes blind from the disease. This is because of cataract surgery in which the clouded lens is removed and replaced with a plastic intra-ocular lens.
“Glaucoma, another cause of blindness, has been described as a silent thief of sight. It cannot be cured but it can be managed. This eye disease is hereditary. The use of drugs and surgery (if need be) goes a long way to stop the damage taking place in the eyes and reduce the pain in some kinds of glaucoma. It is better prevented because a cure is not yet in sight.”
He, however, pointed out that poor sight can be as a result of low vision and uncorrected refractive errors (short sight, long sight and astigmatism).
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