The total number of sightless people across the world is set to multiply within the next four decades, researchers warns. Writing in Lancet...
The total number of sightless people across the world is set to multiply within the next four decades, researchers warns.
Writing in Lancet Global Health , they forecast cases will rise from 36 million to 115 million by 2050, if medical care is not improved by better financial banking.
A flourishing ageing population is being the reason for the rising numbers.
Some of the highest rates of sightlessness and vision handicap are in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
A lot of the world's population with visual impairments is actually dropping, according to the study.
But because the global population is expanding and more people are ageing, researchers foresee the number of people with sight predicament will skyrocket in the coming decades.
Interpretation of data from 188 countries suggests there are more than 200 million people with moderate to severe vision impairment.
That figure is expected to climb to more than 550 million by 2050.
"Even mild visual impairment can considerably impact a person's life," said lead author Prof Rupert Bourne, from Anglia Ruskin University.
"For example, reducing their self reliance... as it often means people are barred from driving."
He said it also limited people's educational and economic favourable chance.
The worst affected areas for visual impairment are in South and East Asia. Parts of sub-Saharan Africa also have particularly extreme rates.
The study calls for better financing in treatments, such as cataract surgery, and ensuring people have access to appropriate vision-correcting glasses.
Prof Rupert Bourne said: "Interventions provide some of the largest returns on financing.
"They are some of the most easily actualized interventions in developing regions."
"They are inexpensive, require little infrastructure and countries recover their costs as people enter back into the workforce," he said.
The charity Sightsavers, which works in more than thirty countries to try to annihilate avoidable blindness, says it is seeing a rise in conditions such as cataracts, where the eye's lens clouds over.
"Due to an ageing population and a rise in chronic disease, we expect the stress of blindness to only grow within the world's poorest countries" said Imran Khan from the charity.
He said health systems in developing countries need to be bettered, and more surgeons and nurses need to be trained to deliver sustainable eye health care.
Blindness affects:
11.7 million persons in South Asia
6.2 million persons in East Asia
3.5 million persons in South East Asia
more than 4% of the populace in parts of sub-Saharan Africa
less than 0.5% of the populace of Western Europe
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