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Numbers of blind people could double by 2020
Source: IRIN
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
NAIROBI, 3 October 2008 (IRIN) - Next week 9 October, is World
Sight Day, an annual day of awareness to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment and to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020.
According to the World Health Organization
(WHO), 75 percent of blindness is avoidable through prevention or treatment. At least 90 percent of visually-impaired people live in low- and middle-income countries. Commissionforafrica.org reports
that in Africa alone, nearly 4 percent of the population (26,778 million people) are severely visually impaired, of whom more than 1 percent (6,782 million) are blind."Visual impairment has a
profound impact on the quality of life of individuals and their communities, and greatly constrains the national potential for poverty alleviation and social and economic development … a
conservative estimate of the annual direct economic productivity loss due to blindness and low vision in sub-Saharan Africa is US$1,830 million in 2000. Without concerted international action, this
will rise to $4,374 million per year by 2020, the equivalent of 0.50 percent of GDP for the region." According to the WHO, without intervention, the number of blind people worldwide could increase
from 37 million in 2008 to 75 million by 2020.ma/bp/mw© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org
