Epidemic Blindness In Yobe

I seek to draw the attention of our colleagues and other relevant stakeholders of an emerging "blinding" medication in circulation at some Primary Health Care centres in yobe.


According to Dr. Adamu Abdullahi (Ophthalmologis), A wrongly packaged CHLORHEXIDINE drops designed for neonatal umblical cord care is being distributed to mothers. The packaging was made in form of an eyedrop and the naive and less educated mothers re mistakenly instilling the drugs in the eyes of their children, who often are vulnerable to ophthalmia neonatorum.

The effect of such instillation is CORNEAL ULCERATION AND MELTING resulting in irreversible blindness!

So far, we have seen three cases, two from Ngelzarma and one from Machina .

Attention of Dr Ashiru, a Consultant Paediatrician, was drawn and he had so far made tremendous efforts at reaching the relevant authorities for retrieval of the distributed drops and creating public awareness to the vulnerable public.

We solicit that you do your BEST to help disseminate this information and educate the public.

Childhood blindness is more burdensome than adult blindness because of the much more blind-years that those children have to live!

Save the EYES of our FUTURE leaders!