World Health Organization
GENEVA, June 2 – Giving away free glasses is a cheap way of boosting the global economy with billions of dollars lost every year due to visual impairments, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday.
An estimated 153 million people worldwide have impaired vision due to untreated eye conditions such as near or farsightedness that can cause blurred vision, researchers from around the world reported in the WHO Bulletin journal.
“Eyeglasses are a low-cost intervention,” the researchers said, calculating a total direct cost of $26 billion to give vision tests and glasses to those who lack them worldwide, plus additional costs related to boosting opthamological services.
The researchers found that “even under the most conservative assumptions, the global provision of eyeglasses would result in considerable savings per case treated and in a net benefit to the global economy.”
Most sufferers are in developing countries and about 8 million of the total are blind, the WHO said in its report, estimating repairable eyesight problems cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year in lost productivity.
“Many less economically developed countries still lack basic infrastructure for distribution and training and have insufficient equipment and personnel to provide eyeglasses to those in need,” it said.
The WHO has previously estimated that 87 percent of the world’s visually impaired people live in poorer countries, with older people and women most heavily affected.
The Western Pacific, including Australia, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, was estimated to have the highest cost because of untreated eye conditions, worth almost 1 percent of the region’s gross domestic product. (For the full WHO Bulletin report, please see: www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/6/08-055673/en/index.html)
Recent Comments