8. Welsh Conservatives Debate: Sight Loss

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:53 pm on 3 July 2019.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 5:53, 3 July 2019

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Minister, as I said at the beginning of my speech, the Welsh Government have been brave, but you need to be braver still, and there are a couple of very, very clear things that you could do. The treatments here aren't expensive. What we need is consistency, we need the feet of the health boards to be held to the fire to stop them from cancelling again and again and again, because many people have multiple cancellations—not one or two, but five, six, seven. That's the first thing. The second thing is we need to have rapid sight loss looked at properly within your strategy. People who have sight loss through brain injury and other issues like that, they're not really catered for, they need a different kind of support and you could do that. Be brave. I'm asking you to do that.

We also need to look at optometrists. You've actually said yourself what a great service they provide. I agree with you 100 per cent. However, they are not able to do two things. One: they're not able to prescribe, and so, if somebody comes to them and needs a prescription, they have to then send them back to the GP—waste everybody's time. There surely must be a workaround. The second thing an optometrist can't do: I don't know about most of you—and I am trying to hurry up and speak as fast as I can, Presiding Officer—but a lot of us will go to the optician that's near where we work. I live in Pembrokeshire, my optician is here in Cardiff, but if I have a problem with my eyes, he cannot refer me to the Pembrokeshire health board. He has to refer me to this one, or I have to then go and find myself an optician. So, why can't we just get rid of that, because that's an unnecessary barrier?

'A Healthier Wales'—it's all about prevention, it's about keeping people sane, safe and in an environment that they're happy with. For most of us, that's our home and with our friends, without having to have all the other pressures of life. If we want to keep our population in that, if we want to do this prevention, then what we have to do is keep people and give them the tools to allow them to stay in their homes. Losing your sight creates loneliness, isolation and all manner of mental health stresses. The world is a very difficult place to navigate without signposts. You've done an awfully good job so far—be braver, because this is one part of the health service that all of us could really get right, and it would help so many people for the future.