India's fight against blindness

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, there are 39 million blind and another 246 million visually impaired people in the world. India however contributes to nearly one fifth of the global blindness crisis. Knowing this, India adopted ‘Vision 2020: The Right to Sight’ in 2004 with the intentions to eliminate blindness to the best of their ability by the year of 2020. Primary eye care in India encompasses an array of different people who have various jobs to help change the vision culture in India. There are also numerous places for patients to go to and be seen that are not just your typical office. An age group to focus on to improve the future of Indian eye care is the pediatric group. This age group makes up 40% of the current population and that number is growing every day. The solution to the eye care crisis comes from all directions including patient education, improved training for staff, and expansion of the centers far and wide to reach more of the population. Overall, we need to start small and make small attainable goals like informing the public about signs to look for in visional impairments before shooting for the stars and reaching for something that is not plausible at this moment in time.