Eye Centre Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Kumasi

Care is a fundamental principle of National Health Service, and it is absolutely vital that this tenet should also extend to the environment in which health services cares and patient fund themselves. We all have a “blind spot’. This is a small area in our field of vision where we cannot see anything at all. Surprisingly none of us is aware of this blind spot, even though we all have one. Unfortunately there is a large blind spot in the world-wide eye services. This blind spot is the tragedy of avoidable blindness and eye disease especially in the rural areas of hot countries. There is little awareness of this problem although it is by far the most important cause of blindness in the world. Visual inputs account for a major part of the sensory stimuli that are essential for the complete development of a child in its formative years. Deprivation of vision in the early years of life has far-reaching psychosocial, educational and economic effects, not only for the affected child but also have a high prospective mortality rate. It is believed about 38 million of the world population are absolutely blind whiles 110 million are visually impaired. Majority of these people are found in the developing countries which are mostly in the tropics (Hot climate). This has contributed to shorter life expectancy. In most developed countries nearly all blind people are old. For example in England, three-quarters of the people are registered as blind are over 70 years of age. These persons are also well taken care of for example social security and other welfare benefits. Most developing countries have low income levels and as such have poor hygiene and poor nutrition which are causes of most diseases. The eye is an external organ and so it is particularly affected by its environment. Poor countries have poor medical services and so diseases are often seen in an advanced or neglected state. Hence these factors create a barrier between eye diseases the developed countries and those of the developing countries. In Ghana with the birth of the National Eye Secretariat there have been a lot of awareness on eye care and hence a lot of eye cares arising to cater for the populace. It has been found out that there is insufficient equipments and facilities and also manpower to cater for the blind and visually impaired. Generally in Ghana, there are two teaching hospitals thus Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for Southern sector and Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital for the northern sector of the country. The northern part of Ghana comparatively to the southern part has inadequate health care facilities and has the highest poor standard of living. This is also aggravated with low level of education of the populace especially with the mid section. Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Agogo Hospital and Bawku Hospital are the well equipped hospitals which cater for most eye diseases in the northern health sector. Komfo Anokye Teaching hospital which handles the most referral cases has woefully inadequate eye care facilities with less manpower to match up the required standards. It is upon this that a survey was conducted as part of procedure for a design thesis topic for a post graduate Diploma programme in Architecture to prove with documentary evidence that K.A.T.H. needs specialised facilities for research into and treatment of Eye diseases and patients respectively. Information gathered has been documented, analysed and finally synthesised into a comprehensive design brief out of the initial clients brief.

Source: KNUST