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IN FOCUS - The achievements and lasting effects of VISION 2020

Blindness is a major public health problem globally. The first estimate of global blindness by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1972 provided a figure of 10 to 15 million, which was considered an underestimate [1]. In 1999, an extraordinary...

IN FOCUS - Beyond 2020: what next for global eye health?

The year 2020 is a pivotal year for global eye health. It marks the conclusion of ‘VISION 2020: The Right to Sight’ which has guided action for the past two decades, and the end of the World Health Organization (WHO)...

IN FOCUS - Prevention and treatment of blindness worldwide: the story of ‘VISION 2020: The Right to Sight’

The story of blindness and efforts to prevent and treat it cannot be told without going back to the earliest recorded history of blindness. Trachoma was described in ancient Egypt, cataract surgery in India about the fifth century BC and...

IN FOCUS - VISION 2020 LINKS Programme: the contribution of health partnerships to reduction in blindness worldwide

As other articles in this series (IN FOCUS Apr 2020) demonstrate, the year 2020 is highly significant in the eye care field. Naming a global initiative ‘VISION 2020: The Right to Sight’ in 1999 was a daring way to focus...

A missed intraocular telescope – an opportunity to re-focus the evidence

Intraocular telescopes allow magnification of the image so that it would be projected into a larger area of the macula, this makes the central defect caused by dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) smaller. The most common approach is a Galilean...

A focus on Pakistan’s growing eye care needs: over 43 million patients treated for curable blindness free of charge

With 90% of the world’s visually impaired living in developing countries, Pakistan is no exception to this on-going global healthcare challenge. Despite massive leaps over the last few decades in targeting this issue, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reports that...