Vision Impairment

It is estimated that 36 million people around the world are blind, and 1.6 billion people worldwide have some form of vision impairment. Approximately 80 percent of all vision impairment — including blindness, nearsightedness and farsightedness — are preventable.¹ The causes of vision impairment vary by region, but the largest contributors globally are uncorrected refractions and cataracts. Lower income nations have higher occurrences of congenital cataracts than high income nations.² In high income nations, diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration are the more prevalent causes of vision loss.³