Abstract:
Background: Blindness or visual loss is a serious public health problem affecting around 36 million of world population. The prediction for the number of blind people in 2020 are 38.5 million due to different causes. Among corneal blindness is one of a major cause for visual loss, it accounts 12% or around 4.9 million affected. This corneal blindness can be avoidable through corneal transplantation; however little is known about the willingness of our community to donate cornea after death. Hence, the objectives of the study conducted to assess the willingness of eye donation and associated factors toward adults visiting health centers in Bole sub-city community in Addis Ababa.
Method: Institutional Cross sectional study done on 396 participants and systematic random sampling were conducted to select the participant who visited bole sub city health centers with age range of 18-77 years. Data collected using a structured and pre-tested questionnaire by a trained data collector. The data cleaned using Epi-info version 7,and then exported to statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 20 for analysis and further cleaning to detect and correct logical errors and inconsistencies due to inaccurate data entry through screening, and editing of suspected data abnormalities. Descriptive part of the data were summarized using measure of central tendency and dispersion. The summarized data carried out to describe the study participants according to characteristics, and proportions computed to find out the prevalence of willingness to eye donation. Associated factors for willingness to donate eyes identified by multivariate binary logistic regression analysis.
Result: The mean age of respondent was 33 with age range of 18 -77 among the participants female participants 57.1% among all participants the willingness of eye donation prevalence rate was 57.1%, and the main reason for willing to donate was positive attitude that pleased to help blind persons (71%) . The multivariate logistic regression analysis result showed that awareness has significant association with willingness to donate eyes thus study participants who were aware about eye donation previously are 2.15 times more likely willing to donate their eyes compare to those participants who are not aware , and also religious belief showed that significant association which the study participants whose religious beliefs are not against eye donation is 2.96 times more likely willing to donate and those whose religious beliefs against are 75% less likely willing to eye donation compare to those who don’t have information whether their religions forbid eye donation or not.
Conclusion and recommendation: Even though the majority of the participants are willing to donate their eyes after death promotion of eye bank activity and continuous advocacy work have to be conducted at community level in order to get additional donors and fill the demand gap.
........................................ Thesis available at ACIPH Library