In February this year the World Health Assembly, in its meeting, resolved to implement an “integrated people-centred eye care” project.
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Finally, a long-standing demand of ophthalmologists and optometrists has been addressed, Kovin Naidoo, honorary professor of optometry at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said.
According to the WHO, at least 2.2 billion people function with compromised eyesight and at least a billion of these were preventable with access to eye care. Around 90% of those with vision impairment or blindness live in low- and middle-income countries.
While vision impairment led to an estimated productive loss of $410.7 billion globally, ensuring access to eye care and treatment for all would cost an estimated $24.8 billion, the WHO fact sheet states.
Mr. Naidoo recalled that in the early 2000s when the idea was discussed with WHO officials, it was “believed that it wasn’t something that needed to be integrated into the calculation of vision impairment and blindness,” he said at the inaugural of the three-day fourth international conference on ‘Eye health in a changing world’ organised by the India Vision Institute, a non-governmental organisation. Alexandre Montague, global CEO of Hoya Vision Care, which sponsored the conference said a researcher in a Shanghai hospital, nearly a fortnight ago, told him “that within the last 20 years, the average onset of myopia (inability to see distant objects clearly) in China moved from 10.5 years to 7.5 years. Within 20 years myopia onset moved up by three years. The data shows that 50% of the population would be myopic by 2050.”
In India, where over 100 million people may not have access to eye care and glasses, it is imperative to take corrective measures, pointed out Vinod Daniel, chief executive officer of IVI. Once the country adopts the WHO’s Specs 2030 everything would change, he said. “We are extremely excited with the programme as the biggest change is the reporting of numbers once the WHO assembly adopts it. From a government perspective they did not have to report the number of people who have received spectacles just as they now report the number of cataracts,” he said.
It is this requirement that the country must ensure better sight for all the diagnosed persons within six years that Hoya proposes to address. The company, which had its genesis in Hoya, a town to the west of Tokyo, Japan, has inaugurated a facility in Sriperumbudur around 50 km from Chennai to create spectacles.
Mr. Montague says the aim is to educate people on the need to wear glasses, and improve the quality of eye care as well. “India has been identified as one of our strategic markets and there is a huge amount of value we can bring to the market. We are very happy with the infrastructure, access to electricity, water and quality of eye care professionals here (in Chennai),” he said. The company had set up a facility earlier but shut down nearly 10 years ago.
He explained that the plan is to identify children who could progress to myopia and arrest the progression of the condition, working with optometrists to help identify children who can be provided spectacles.
Rajeev Prasad, President, Asia Pacific Council of Optometry, pointed out that with just 26,000 registered ophthalmologists in India the job falls on the optometrists to provide the necessary intervention. This is true globally as well, he added.
The need for intervention must begin early, the optometrist said. While earlier around five to eight percent of children had vision problems it rose to 25% post-Covid. “Our own thinking has changed. Earlier we asked children to maintain a 10 ft distance to watch TV. Now, post-Covid we are buying gadgets for children for online classes. We are trying to make sure with the help of our partner that children do not go unnoticed, undetected and uncorrected,” he said.
East and South Asian countries such as Taiwan, Korea, China, Singapore and Japan have been seeing a significant increase in myopia. “Every second person wears glasses. That is where WHO comes into the picture. It is predicted that half of the world population will wear glasses,” he said.
