CARIMAC Times 2016: The JREAM Edition Journalists Reviving Awareness of what Matters | Page 148

... they can only accommodate a certain number
of students ... The situation is dire.”
But she pointed out that improvements are
ahead.
“The Ministry of Education (MOE) has been doing
some work to facilitate more sensitisation, in
terms of persons [teachers] who are in the
college system ... to prepare them [so] that
they can better identify the children who
would come into their classrooms as having a
disability - so that those children can get early
intervention,” she said.
Jason Ricketts, former liberal studies student
at the University of the West Indies (UWI),
Mona, has been visually impaired since birth
as a result of having Glaucoma in both eyes.
According to Dr Lizette Mowatt, consultant
ophthalmologist at the University Hospital of

Dr. Lizette Mowatt
Photo courtesy of Jamaica Information Service

the West Indies (UHWI), Glaucoma, a common
group of conditions, is characterised by an
increase in the pressure within the eye. The
pressure destroys the optic nerve which is
important to the ability to see. It is one of the
leading causes of blindness.
Ricketts expressed that he received education
in the general school system but he often
encountered ridicule and mistreatment.
“Life in high school was bittersweet because
when I went there, it was the first time many
of the persons [administrators] had to deal
with an individual who was blind, so they
shied away from me. They never knew how to
approach me. [Some] of the students, however,
teased me. They called me blind, asked weird
questions, laughed at me and [even] put things
in my way,” he recounted.

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