International Federation of Aging report on vision loss

According to a recent report presented by the International Federation on Ageing, vision loss is no longer an inevitable part of getting older. It calls for increased public education and awareness programmes, improved public policies and greater integration of preventive eye health interventions into public health systems.

The study entitled ‘The High Cost of Low Vision: The Evidence on Ageing and the Loss of Sight’ highlights that people can now age with healthy vision, given 21st-century innovations in diagnosis, biomedicine, nutrition, technology and preventive care. 

Apart from the costs of vision impairment worldwide (estimated to reach $2.8 trillion by 2020, with $760 billion in indirect costs) vision loss creates a ‘snowball effect’: it can affect mobility and daily activities, often leads to depression, injury and the need for long-term care, resulting in healthcare and associated service costs. Vision loss and related health conditions in older adults also impacts families, caregivers and society at large. The report calls for attention in the following areas:

• Integrating visual screening and other preventive eye-health interventions into public health practices for adults of all ages;
• Creating education and awareness programs that include vision-loss prevention, detection, and treatment;
• Reimbursing both treatments and preventive eye health interventions to ensure positive impact on system-wide costs and support for future innovation;
• Developing and utilizing tele-health mechanisms to provide greater access to screening and treatment regardless of geographical location;
• Advocating for vision loss to become widely recognized as a preventable health condition; 
• Conducting more research on the outcomes and efficacy of preventive eye health.

For the report: http://www.ifa-fiv.org/new-leadership-for-the-ifa/