The bane of false eyelashes

“When you put these false eyelashes, you change the color of your eyelenses, you should be alert that these chemicals used can provoke skin cancer and a lot more. When your eyelashes begin to fall off, as a result of their arid nature, it seems as if it is a mere infection, but in reality it is cancer” states Dr. Julius Wirntem Fondzendzef of “Integrated Community Eye Care Services”.

Despite recent celebrations of the World Sight Day, and the crusade for the protection of the eyes, many are yet to come to terms with the tenets of the Global Action Plan, namely Avoidable Blindness and Vision Impairment (2012-2019).Most sight defects occur as a result of negligence and not ignorance.

False eyelashes are worn by most women and young girls with aims of enhancing their beauty, by way of changing the colour of their eye lenses to blue or brown, without recourse to the implications on their vision.

Dr. Wirntem, an Ophthalmologist at the Mount Mary Hospital, Buea, told The Post that, eye cancer is caused by such actions. He said the eyelid is composed of so many parts, like gland hormones, which are living, causing the eye to be moist, oily and sticky. Artificial eyelashes absorb these secretions the eyes produce, making them dry, because, these false eyelashes are not living, they dry the skin surface, deadening all other moist tissues and causing it to peel off.

Remaining lashes begin to fall off. Moreover, the use of the eye lashes is to catch dirt meant to enter the eye because they fall off, the eye becomes prone to any kind of disease. When your lid margins are constantly reducing, they either bend outward or inward.The remaining lashes will be stretching on the eye, scaring the inner eye hole and eventually leading to blindness, according to the ophthalmologist.

Many are those who attribute having sight and eventually losing it to bewitchment.

The National Vice President of the Blind, Patrick Nsuh, a man, living with this disability, thinks otherwise. He terms it the denial syndrome, and cautions those who misuse their eyes by piercing the lids for earrings, changing the colour of their eye lenses, attaching false eyelashes to be careful since, as he puts it, the eye is the light of the body.

"Nobody who has had sight and lost it will happily want to see another lose theirs, except you don’t know what you are doing," he laments. Patrick who was not born blind had to face his fate from the age of 10, having suffered from the late detection of glaucoma, a hereditary African eye infection.

Since then, he has been advocating for women to be extremely careful not to damage their eyes, describing any such act as misplaced priority.