Prevention lags in the battle against eye diseases

Original Source

HA NOI – A conference began yesterday on eye disease prevention heard that progress is being made in the area, but Viet Nam must increase efforts.

At the week-long conference, hosted by the Ministry of Health along with the international NGO Atlantic Philanthropies, conference attendees learned that about 600,000 out of the 84 million population are blind and more than 1 million people suffer from poor eyesight. About 2 million people need to receive treatment for eye diseases each year.

The conference will present detailed analysis on the implicit danger of eye diseases such as cataracts.

Conference attendees from participant provinces are being strongly urged to come up with eyesight protection and blindness prevention plans and to implement them with whatever means necessary in the hopes that Viet Nam could be among the first countries to be free of preventable and curable blindness by the year 2020.

Health Deputy Minister Nguyen Thi Xuyen said the proportion of blind among the elderly remained high despite progress in reducing the proportion over the last few years.

Overall, the proportion of blind dropped to 0.43 per cent of the population last year from 0.63 per cent in 2002. – VNS