NDA Partners Eye Centre On Improving Vision Of Armed Forces, At World Sight Day

By Frederick Peters, KADUNA.

NEWSDAILYNIGERIA: The Commandant of the Nigerian Defence Academy, ( NDA) Major General John Ochai, said the Academy is collaborating with the National Eye Centre, ( NEC) Kaduna, to improve the eyesight of officers and cadets of the Armed Forces for optimal productive.

Ochai, while underscoring the invaluable importance of good eyesight and vision to the human person noted its more significant importance to the profession of the Arms.

He said the collaboration with the National Eye Centre is aimed at providing the academy, Secondary healthcare facilities in improving their eye sight.

The Commandant made this known at the World Sight Day Lecture / QUIZ” with the theme ” Children Love Your Eyes” at the National Eye Centre, ( NEC) Kaduna, on Thursday in Kaduna

He said “the importance of the eyes and good eyesight and vision to an individual to live a quality life cannot be overemphasized, but for us in the Military it has an even more significant importance in the sense that without good eyesight you can not even use you personal weapon to even defend your self, because you cannot even aim to shoot, to kill and that’s the basic soldier’s skill for every body in the profession of the arms, particularly for officers”

According to him, the Nigerian Defence Academy is tasked to train cadets to become officers that will lead Men of the Armed forces of Nigeria to battle, “without good eyesight they won’t be able to accomplish tasks given to them by their commanders and it goes even beyond defending themselves, adding that without good eyesight targeting becomes difficult, which could lead

” to unintended consequences, like delivering weapon systems to the wrong target and you can imagine the implication of the that, so for we, in the Armed forces we take good eyesight and vision very important, and that’s the reason why we are here to collaborate with the National Eye Centre( NEC) to provide us with secondary health care facilities in improving our eyesight”

” And I must say here, it’s not until we find it difficult to see that you need to approach this kind of facility,( NEC) even routinely, you need to access health care facilities that has to do with your vision to ensure that you nip in the bud any challenges that will be there in the future
during the lecture; this morning we heard that regardless of state of health anybody who approaches 80years, will have some challenges with his eyesight, but the earlier you are able to address those challenges while you are still young the better for you as you aged.

” what we preach to our cadets and other members of the Armed forces is to make hay while the sun shines, by ensuring that they ensue they conduct regular checks on their eyesight to enhance their wellness at all times” he reiterated

Earlier, the speaker and consultant optomologist with the NEC, Kaduna, Dr Murtala Muhammad Umar, Acting Chairman Medical Advisory committee of the hospital among others things harped on five preventive measures of blindness, said the world sight day today’s theme centred on children” and I did mentioned the five levels of preventive healthcare generally, which I customized into eye health, promotion and prevention, so mainly it’s about health promotion, generally, before contacting the disease what measures should we take, ,

” we talked about, fortified vitamin A we have in salt, sugar and other measures like people in some occupations that are prone to injuries to the eyes like welders, carpenters, what do they do to protect their eyes, what protective glasses should they wear and specific protection like immunization against measles, which is one of the causes of blindness, in children, so when you immunize your child against measles you are preventing blindness indirectly” he said.