Hanoi meeting marks World Glaucoma Day

A meeting, entitled Glaucoma Detection and Control, was organised in Hanoi on March 11 in response to World Glaucoma Day (March 12).

During the meeting, held by the Vietnam National Institute of Ophthalmology (VNIO), it was revealed that there are approximately 30,000 glaucoma patients in Vietnam and that glaucoma is the worlds second-biggest cause of blindness.

According to research conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), 5.2 million people across the world suffer from blindness due to glaucoma, accounting for 12.3 percent of all blindness.

The number of glaucoma patients is predicted to rise to around 80 million, or 2.86 percent of all people over 40, by 2020, with 11.2 million glaucoma cases leading to blindness.

The majority of the worlds blind live in developing countries, mainly in rural areas which lack basic medical services, according to the results of the WHOs research.

On this occasion, the VNIO worked with the Fred Hollows Foundation Vietnam to supply doctors to northern provincial hospitals and offer free medical check-ups to relatives of glaucoma patients.