The Executive Director of the Ghana Blind Union, Dr Peter Obeng-Asamoah, has made a passionate appeal to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to expand its coverage to include specialised and advanced healthcare services for individuals who are blind or visually impaired.
In an interview with Channel One TV, Dr Obeng-Asamoah highlighted the economic and social challenges that blind individuals in Ghana face, underscoring the urgent need for a more inclusive health policy that considers the specific healthcare needs of people with disabilities.
Dr. Obeng-Asamoah described the current healthcare coverage available to blind individuals under the NHIS as insufficient, with minimal provisions made for the unique challenges faced by those with visual impairments.
Blind individuals in Ghana, Dr. Obeng-Asamoah explained, are more likely to face economic hardships due to barriers to employment and accessibility. He pointed out that a significant portion of the visually impaired population is either unemployed or underemployed, especially those residing in rural areas with fewer opportunities for sustainable livelihoods.
Dr Obeng-Asamoah elaborated on the health challenges that come with ageing, noting that as blind individuals grow older, they are as susceptible as others to conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, and other age-related ailments.
He urged that the NHIS should specifically focus on making advanced healthcare services accessible to the visually impaired community, which might include regular screenings, specialist consultations, and affordable access to medications for chronic diseases.
“There is no policy that shows that we are getting anything more. And this thing is quite serious because you take it for the fact that a lot of blind persons and for that matter, persons with disability don’t have jobs, those in the rural areas, those who are unemployed, yes, those who don’t have jobs and they are growing older. So, therefore, many of them will not have pensions.
“We know that with old age comes a lot of ailments like hypertension, diabetes, and other things that affect almost everybody but these people don’t have any source of income. And so when these ailments set in, healthcare, he eludes most of them.
“They don’t just get it. So that is an area that we are hoping that our government will look into these things. But for blind persons, as we stand right now, there is no special priority given to us.”
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