Bill Harvey: A world of difference

First, the good news. A new paper in this month’s Lancet has suggested that the prevalence in blindness and visual impairment (VI) worldwide is reducing.

The paper by a team of authors, led by Professor Rupert Bourne from Anglia Ruskin University and funded by the Brien Holden Institute, has analysed the data first collated back in 2015 and compared it with similar data from 1990. In 2015, there were 36 million blind, 217 million with severe or moderate distance visual impairment and 1.1 billion near-vision impaired. This represents a reduction in VI prevalence from 4.58% in 1990 to 3.38% in 2015. The vast majority of VI people (89%) live in low and middle income countries, and 55% are women.