Prevalence and sociodemographic factors associated with vision difficulties in Ghana, Gambia, and Togo: a multi-country analysis of recent multiple Indicator cluster surveys

Seidu, Abdul-Aziz, Agbadi, Pascal, Duodu, Precious Adade, Dey, Nutifafa Eugene Yaw, Duah, Henry Ofori, and Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku (2021) Prevalence and sociodemographic factors associated with vision difficulties in Ghana, Gambia, and Togo: a multi-country analysis of recent multiple Indicator cluster surveys. BMC Public Health, 21. 2148.

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Abstract

Background: The sense of sight is one of the important human sensory abilities that is required for independent functioning and survival. The highest burden of sight-related problems is recorded in low-and middle-income countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the burden, nationally representative analyses to understand the prevalence and determinants of vision difficulties are hard to find. Therefore, this study addressed this knowledge gap by estimating the prevalence of vision difficulties and its correlates in gender-stratified models in three West African countries: Ghana, Gambia, and Togo.

Methods: The study used the most recent Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys of Ghana (2017–2018), Gambia (2018), and Togo (2017). Summary statistics were used to describe the participants and logistic regression was used to perform the bivariate and multivariate analyses. The analyses were performed using Stata version 14 and the complex survey design of the datasets was accounted for using the ‘svyset’ command.

Results: Gendered differences were observed for vision difficulties. More women than men reported vision difficulties in Ghana (men: 14.67% vs women: 23.45%) and Togo (men: 14.86% vs women: 23.61%), but more men than women reported vision difficulties in Gambia (men: 11.64% vs women: 9.76%). We also observed gender differences in how age, education, marital status, and region of residence were significantly associated with reported vision difficulties. The direction and magnitude of these relationships were different among men and women across the survey data in Ghana, Gambia, and Togo.

Conclusion: The findings imply the need to tackle the existing gender inequities that are associated with vision difficulties to promote the quality of life of individuals, especially among older adults.

Item ID: 72319
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1471-2458
Keywords: Vision difficulty, Prevalence, Sociodemographic factors, Ghana, Gambia, Togo, Multiple Indicator cluster surveys, Gender
Copyright Information: © The Author(s). 2021 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Date Deposited: 09 Feb 2022 13:36
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