Call for action on blindness
More people are suffering from some form of blindness and their number worldwide could reach 46 million within 14 years, an international conference at Nakhon Ratchasima was told yesterday.
Intervention was needed to halt the trend, hundreds of experts from 20 Asia-Pacific nations heard. They called for "effective international cooperation" to fight visual disabilities.According to the World Health Organisation, there are 37 million blind people worldwide. Almost 1.5 million of those are children and 90 per cent are in developing countries, according to Thailand's Public Health Ministry permanent secretary Dr Prat Boonyawongvirot. Thirty million of the world's blind were aged 50 years and older, Prat said. He noted blindness in children was caused mainly by congenital defects or chronic diseases such as diabetes. Degenerative diseases were the major causes of blindness in those of advancing years. But as many as 75 per cent of cases could be prevented, Prat said. Thailand had about 200,000 people considered completely blind - or about 0.3 per cent of the population, one of the lowest rates in the region.
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