Abstract:

Purpose: Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide (1). Eye health education that influences people to participate in regular ophthalmologic care may be an important step to detect glaucoma early, thereby preventing needless (1). As glaucoma-related blindness in only avoidable with early detection and treatment, it is imperative to find asymptomatic individuals in the target population. However, for people to present to eye care providers, they need knowledge about glaucoma and the benefits of early detection and treatment. (2)

Methodology: A cross sectional study was done involving patients attending ophthalmology clinic at Bugando Medical Centre. All participants were assessed on their level of awareness and knowledge of glaucoma by the questionnaires given. The results were analyzed by computer installed with SPSS program then thereafter the results were distributed at ophthalmology department, School of public health and the library.

Results: This study shows that among attending ophthalmology clinic at Bugando Medical Centre, among all respondents 135 (67.5%) had heard about glaucoma whereas 65 people (32.5%) had not heard about glaucoma, and majority of the participants have poor level of knowledge about glaucoma (60.5%), few had average knowledge 68(34%) and only 11(5.5%) had good knowledge about glaucoma.

Conclusion and Recommendation: From this study it shows that majority of the populations are not aware and have no good knowledge about glaucoma, the government should spread awareness and provide good ophthalmology services and training to health providers and doing several outreaches especially to the rural areas so as to prevent blindness caused by glaucoma.