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Visually impaired number 400,000 in SL

by Bharatha Malawaraarachchi

Blindness has posed a threat to the way of life of people not only in Sri Lanka but also worldwide.

There are an estimated 180 million visually-impaired people in the world while the number in Sri Lanka stands at around 400,000.

"Cataract is responsible for more than half of the cases of blindness while trachoma and childhood blindness respectively account for 15 per cent and 4 per cent of blindness," a senior eye specialist quoting a WHO report told the Daily News.

In Sri Lanka, there are around 100,000 severely blind persons while 300,000 are severely visually disabled persons. "Although cataract is a small operation, some in Sri Lanka die without their sight being restored," the specialist said.

Among the other reasons for blindness are uncorrected refractive error, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related muscular degeneration.

According to the WHO, 45 million in the world are unable to move about without help and one third of this live in South East Asia. Of the 12 people who become blind every minute in the world, four are from this region. "According to the WHO, ninety per cent of the blindness in this region is avoidable," the specialist added.

The shortage of human resources - specially eye surgeons to cope with this phenomena is among the major reasons for the present situation in Sri Lanka, the specialist added.

However, it is learnt that the Health Ministry has drawn up plans to train an adequate number of eye surgeons over the next years to meet this challenge.

In Sri Lanka, a total of 17,000 eye surgeries are performed annually at the Eye Hospital, Colombo and 10,000 of these are cataract operations.

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