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10 Facts about Blindness and Visual Impairment
- Worldwide, more than 161 million people are visually impaired; among them, 124 million have low vision and 37 million are blind.
- Another 153 million people suffer from visual impairment due to uncorrected refractive errors (near-sightedness, far-sightedness or astigmatism). Virtually all these people could restore normal vision with eyeglasses or contact lenses.
- More than 90% of the world's visually impaired people live in low- and middle-income countries.
- Except in the most developed countries, cataract remains the leading cause of blindness.
- Cataract surgery is one of the most cost-effective treatments that can be offered in developing countries. It can allow people to increase their economic productivity by up to 1500% of the cost of the surgery during the first post-operative year.
- Age-related causes of visual impairment and blindness are increasing, as is blindness due to uncontrolled diabetes.
- The good news is that up to 75% of all blindness in adults is avoidable through prevention or treatment. Worldwide, corneal scarring is the single most important cause of avoidable blindness, followed by cataract and retinopathy of prematurity (ROP).
- Infectious causes of blindness are decreasing globally as a result of public health action. The number of people affected by blinding trachoma has decreased from 360 million people in 1985 to approximately 80 million people today.
- An estimated 1.4 million children under age 15 are blind. Yet approximately half of all childhood blindness can be avoided by early treatment of disease and correcting abnormalities at birth such as cataract and glaucoma.
- The World Health Organization is a founding partner of Vision2020, the Global Initiative for the Elimination of Avoidable Blindness. Vision2020 is working to eliminate the main causes of avoidable blindness by the year 2020.
For more information on the magnitude and causes of visual impairment visit here.
Source: World Health Organisation (WHO)
