Comment: Profession to be proud of

Last week two sets of statistics were revealed that give cause to celebrate the sterling work of eye care practitioners.

The first was news from the GOC that complaints against opticians have fallen to their lowest number in three years, with a decrease of almost 30 per cent in 2006/7 to a total of 129, compared to 2004/5. And these positive findings were announced at the same time as we discovered that in England just under 10.5 million eye examinations took place for the year ending March 2007, the highest ever number and a million higher than seven years ago. The figure for Wales also increased, but only slightly. Another statistic shows that more domiciliary eye exams were carried out, up by some 5 per cent in England and Wales.