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New research finds that 153 million people are blind simply because they have no glasses

Today, on World Sight Day, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed that a staggering 153 million people worldwide are unable to see simply because they have no glasses. This is on top of the 37 million who are blind and a further 124 million with low vision that cannot be corrected any further.

Whilst older people are understandably the worst affected, almost 13 million of those without glasses who desperately need them are children.

In developing countries, where the problem is most acute, people's lack of glasses render them effectively blind or visually impaired with disastrous consequences for their livelihoods, their families and their quality of life.

UK charity Sightsavers International, which works through local organisations to eliminate avoidable blindness in developing countries, has established a new system to supply high volume cheap glasses. At a cost of as little as £1 per pair, Sightsavers can buy high quality glasses for shipment to almost anywhere around the world. Far cheaper and better than donated second-hand glasses.

Caroline Harper, Chief Executive of Sightsavers said: 'Sightsavers hopes that today's announcement by the WHO spells the beginning of the end of visual impairment caused by nothing more than a lack of decent glasses. With an optician on every high street here in the UK, it is hard to imagine millions being prevented from working, seeing loved ones and enjoying a decent quality of life for want of a pair of specs.'

 

For all media enquiries and for Sightsavers' picture of children in Mali and spectacles, please contact James Georgalakis or Michelle Akande on 01444 446671/86 or outside normal office hours on 07775 928253 or press@sightsavers.org

 

Notes to Editors

1. Picture credit: Caroline Irby/Sightsavers - Caption: Children wait to be fitted with glasses in Mali. New research by WHO has revealed that 153 million people are unable to see, mainly in developing countries, simply because they have no spectacles.'
2. World Sight Day is an annual international event, held on the second Thursday of October, aimed at raising awareness of avoidable blindness.
3. Sightsavers works with local partners in over 30 countries across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, in poor and the least served communities to prevent and cure blindness, restore sight and provide education and training for people who are blind.
4. It costs Sightsavers as little as £1 to buy glasses for people in developing countries, and the cost including shipment is as little as £1.50.
5. The current official WHO figures for blindness (37m) and low vision (124m) assume best correction and therefore exclude people who are functionally visually impaired due to uncorrected refractive error (short-sightedness). This is an important technicality as the reality is in most developing countries many people do not have spectacles and are effectively or "functionally" blind or low vision. Please note this is about uncorrected refractive error causing problems with distance vision - it excludes problems due to uncorrected presbyopia (long-sightedness usually affecting older people). Research will be going on over the next few years to try and identify numbers relating to uncorrected presbyopia.