Urgent call for better eye care in Pakistan

Islamabad:Eye health is as important for children, as it is for the elderly. A severe lack in the eye health care in Pakistan is causing unnecessary vision problems for the children and the elderly, and everyone in between.

This World Sight Day, falling Thursday, international development organisation Sightsavers is calling for better access to eye health services for everyone from children to the elderly. Vision problems don’t just affect the elderly, a common misconception. Everyone, at some point, needs support to maintain good eye health to see the board at school, to drive and work, and for independence later in life. Yet eye health is a neglected area of healthcare, and people are struggling unnecessarily with avoidable blindness and vision impairment.

In Pakistan and around the world people are gathering colleagues, friends, or items from work or home together to form as big an eye shape as they can, and sharing their #EyeCreation on social media, because we need big changes to address the global inequity of eye health. The efforts are to highlight the importance of eye health in public. Sightsavers with college of ophthalmology and Allied Vision Sciences and CHIP marked World Sight Day by organizing free eye screening camps, awareness sessions and walks.

Munazza Gillani, Director Pakistan and Middle East at Sightsavers comments: "Two thirds of people don't have access to the glasses they need to see clearly. This applies to children as well as adults. The same can be said of treatment for other eye conditions like cataracts, which a child can be born with.” Globally, there are 1.1 billion people who have an untreated or preventable visual impairment.

Munazza Gillani continues: “In Pakistan the numbers are shocking. In 2020 in Pakistan, there were an estimated 26 million people with vision loss. Of these, 1.8 million people were blind. Sightsavers is working with the Ministry of Health and partners to improve access to quality, affordable eye health services for all. Recently WHO had certified Pakistan as Trachoma free country which is a huge milestone in eye health however there is still a long way to go to eliminate avoidable blindness from country.” Across the world, the avoidable vision issues of cataract and uncorrected refractive errors, such as short-sightedness, are the leading causes of blindness and vision impairment respectively.

The impact of eye health can be seen in Zahra’s life who wants to become an artist but due to uncorrected refractive error she neither performed well in studies nor in painting. Her life changed with a pair of glasses and now she is doing well, both in studies and painting and she is aiming to be famous artist one day. Munazza Gillani concludes: “Many eye health interventions are relatively small or straightforward, yet the impact can be life-changing.