75% of blindness is avoidable

Sourced from the Botswana Press Agency

Health workers at a two-day workshop in Botswana have confirmed that 75% of blindness can be avoided. The workshop are gathering information for an initiative called Vision 2020 on blindness prevention which names the World Health Organisation as one of its collaborators. This is a global initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindness by the year 2020.

Research by the WHO and related organisations estimated that there were 37 million blind people worldwide and up to 2 million people get blind each year. It is also estimated that blindness in developing countries is double that of the developed countries with 50% of blindness being caused by cataract.

It is because an estimated 75% of blindness is avoidable that the global initiative of Vision 2020 (dubbed 'the right to sight') was launched.

Projections based on the global population increase predict that 76 million would be blind by 2020. 75% of this population lived in Africa, SE Asia and West Pacific and 60% was treatable whilst 20% was preventable, cataract being by far the greatest cause of blindness. In Botswana blindness was mostly caused by cataract at 46.9 per cent followed by diabetic retinopathy at 20 per cent, corneal opacity at 13.2 per cent and trachoma at 6.2 per cent.