Objectives: To identify the various means by which patients overcome barriers to cataract surgery in a tertiary hospital. Materials and methods: This was a descriptive hospital-based study of the barriers to the uptake of cataract surgical services in Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital and how patients overcome them. Four hundred patients who presented to the eye clinic participated in this study. Patients, who had surgery within the study period at least more than a week from counseling and when a clinical decision to have surgery was made, were asked to describe the ways they overcame their barriers to surgery and the responses were collated and analyzed using the IBM SPSS version 21. Results: The study recruited 400 consecutive patients attending the eye clinic who had a cataract or were yet to have cataract surgery. There were 217 males (54.3%) and 183 females (45.8%), a ratio of 1.2:1. One hundred and eighty-five (84.5%) participants had delayed cataract surgery during the study period with finance (51.4%) and a lack of felt need (28.6%) playing a major role in delaying surgeries. Fear of outcome (12.4%) also played a role in delaying surgery. Free cataract surgical services helped sort out the economic constraint among some participants, whereas support from relations, as well as motivation from relatives and other people who had good outcome from surgeries, helped overcome other barriers such as fear of outcome and lack of escort to the hospital. Conclusion: Motivators may play a huge role in improving the uptake of cataract surgery. These motivators may be cataract evangelists or relatives themselves. Economic constraints may be tackled by free eye surgeries, reduced cost of eye care, and/or improving efficiency in the course of providing eye-care services.

Objective: To identify the barriers to the uptake of cataract surgical services among patients with cataract attending the eye clinic in Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital (ISTH), Edo State, Nigeria. Materials and methods: The study was a descriptive hospital-based study of patients with cataract attending the eye clinic of the ISTH, Irrua, Edo State. An interviewer-administered questionnaire designed to identify the barriers to the uptake of cataract surgical services was used for this study. Responses to questions on willingness to have cataract surgery, reasons for unwillingness, and the factors which made willing participants end up not having surgery or delaying their surgery were obtained, collated and analyzed. Data were analyzed with IBM SPSS Software, version 21. Results: Four hundred patients made of 217 (54.3%) males and 183 (45.8%) females in a ratio of 1.2:1 were participated in this study. One hundred and eighty-eight (47%) of respondents did not know that cataract surgical services were available at ISTH, 34 (15%) had surgery within a week, whereas 189 (80.4%) respondents had surgery more than a week after being told they were eligible for surgery. Fear of poor outcome and lack of finance ranked high in the list of reasons for the delay in surgery. Women were 1.5 times more likely to have surgery than men. Education and distance from health facility had no role to play in the uptake of cataract surgery. Conclusion: Fear of poor surgical outcome, lack of finances, and lack of knowledge of the availability of surgical services are impediments to access cataract surgery at ISTH and improving surgical outcome and education about available surgical services may improve the uptake of cataract surgery.

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