(06-10-2008) The health sector will boost eye care services nationwide on October 9 for World Sight Day 2008, said Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Xuyen yesterday at a meeting held by the National Institute of Ophthalmology (NIO) and ORBIS in Viet Nam.

World Sight Day 2008 will focus on improving treatment and raising awareness of vision impairment, diseases associated with ageing and blindness prevention, as well as mobilising financial support for eye care programmes.

As part of the day’s activities, the poor and elderly in Ha Noi and Thanh Hoa Province will receive free eye check ups and surgery, said Xuyen.

"The World Health Organisation (WHO) is developing, together with member States and its international partners, a plan of action for the next 5 years in order to develop eye care systems that can grant delivery of comprehensive eye care to all populations in need," said Jean-Marc Olive, WHO representative in Viet Nam.

"If political will is ensured, over 80 per cent of today’s visual impairments will be cured or avoided," stressed Olive.

According to a 2007 NIO survey, 370,640 Vietnamese people suffer from blindness and 1.58 million people have poor vision, a total of 572,757 men and more than one million women.

The main causes of blindness are cataracts (66.1 per cent), post-segment pathology of the eyeball (10.1 per cent) and glaucoma (6.53 per cent). This means that there are over 192,000 people with cataract blindness and over 25,000 who are blind due to glaucoma, both treatable diseases.

Thanks to recent efforts of the health sector, the rate of blindness has been reduced from 0.63 per cent in 2002 to 0.43 per cent in 2007.
From VietNamNews