Cataract surgery output and cost of hospitalization for cataract surgery in the University of Benin Teaching hospital

Cataract is the most common cause of curable blindness in Nigeria. Nigeria has an overall population of approximately 110 million with a blindness prevalence rate of 1%. Cataract is responsible for 30 - 60% of the blindness. A great deal of blindness prevention activity should therefore centre around cataract surgery if we are to clear out cataract back log of over 1/2 a million individuals. Only 106 cataract surgeries were performed in the 24 months reviewed. There were 75 males and 31 females. This study highlights the meagre contribution of teaching hospitals to the prevention of blindness. Several factors including ignorance, poverty, socioeconomic and political tensions and teaching hospital bureaucracy are no doubt responsible for this. Hospitalization for cataract surgery is becoming very unpopular in the developed world as this tends to increase cost of surgery. The need to establish cataract surgery outreach services and adopt day case surgical procedures in our hospitals cannot be over emphasized as strategies for clearing our national cataract backlog.