As part of efforts to reduce blindness in Nigeria, the Lagos branch of National Optometric Association, has joined the rest of the world to mark this year’s World Sight Day (WSD) which holds every second Thursday of October.
According to a statement by the association, WSD, whose theme for this year is ‘Eye Care for All’ is an annual day of awareness held to draw global attention on blindness and vision impairment. Adding that, the day was dedicated for advocacy and communications opportunity for the eye health community.
According to the World Health Organisation WHO), 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide; 246 million have low vision and 37 million blind. Over 90 per cent of all people with visual impairment live in developing countries and up to 80 per cent of all visual impairment is avoidable.
Avoidable blindness is defined as blindness which could be either treated or prevented by known or cost-effective means.
Although there are many causes of vision impairment, VISION 2020 wish to address the main causes of avoidable blindness in order to have the greatest possible impact on vision loss worldwide.
Globally, the main causes of avoidable blindness are uncorrected refractive error (43%), un-operated cataract (33 per cent) and glaucoma (2 per cent). 82 per cent of people living with all visual impairment including blindness are aged 50years and above. Children are not spared as one in four children have uncorrected visual problems; 19 million visually impaired with 12 million due to refractive errors and 1.4 million below 15 years irreversibly blind needing visual rehabilitation.
The psychosocio-economic implications of visual impairment cannot be over emphasised.
All these can be effectively handled and managed if eye care is made available to all. Sometimes the cost might just be a simple pair of glasses.
By: Martins Ifijeh
This Day News
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