Eye diseases and blindness in Adjumani refugee settlement camps, Uganda

Objectives: To determine the prevalence and causes of the blindness and ocular morbidity amongst Sudanese refugees; to prioritise and provide eye care services to the refugees and; to device administrative strategies and logistics of prevention and control of blinding diseases among the refugees.Design: A mobile outreach clinic study for six weeks.Setting: Adjumani settlement camps for Sudanese refugees in Uganda.Participants: Seven hundred patients in eighteen settlement camps.Interventions: Medical treatment and surgical correction offered.Main outcome measures: Cataract, trachoma and xerophthalmia are the major causes of blindness.Results: One hundred and forty six patients (21%) were bilaterally blind, and 77 patients (11%) were unilaterally blind. The three leading causes of blindness are cataract (42%), xerophthalmia (28%) and trachoma (21%). Glaucoma and other non-specified causes were responsible for the remaining blindness (9%). The crudeprevalence of blindness among the 700 patients was 20. This is an extremely high prevalence, nearly ten times higher than for Ugandans living in Uganda.Conclusion: In refugee settlement camps setting, residents may have a much higher prevalence of eye diseases and blindness than non-refugees