Dr. Nada Al Yusuf, Consultant Ophthalmologist , Cornea and Refractive Surgeon and chairperson of Ophthalmology department at the University Medical Centre of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Medical City said that the Centre has celebrated World Sight Day (WSD) together with the WHO and the international Agency for Prevention of Blindness.

This world Sight Day celebration was organised with the international Agency for Prevention of Blindness which is based in London, for using the same logo and theme “Let us Make Vision Counts.”

The aim of these celebrations is to increase the awareness of the public and specialised institutions of the importance of vision and prevention of avoidable blindness and visual impairment.

This celebration included a symposium during which she gave a lecture on prevention of blindness. She displayed recent statistics released in October showing the prevalence of blindness in Bahrain to be 2.71% while in Saudi Arabia it is 3.17%. The prevalence is much less in western Europe, France for example has a prevalence of 0.89% while it goes up to 8% is some Asian poor countries. This shows that Bahrain has a relatively low prevalence of blindness, However, it should further be reduced to match developed countries.

Dr. Nada Al Yusuf recommended reviewing the existing screening policies and get the vision checked of school children at their different school stages . This will detect any visual impairment if present and can be dealt with early. Moreover, she concentrated on Diabetic retinopathy as a cause of blindness and recommended increasing and enhancing the screening programmes to prevent complication that can lead to blindness, especially that diabetes has the highest incidence rate in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. It is 21.9% in Bahrain and goes higher in Saudi Arabia to reach 23.9% and 23% in Kuwait. These percentages considered the highest worldwide and necessitates putting new policies to reduce the visual complications of this disease. In addition she recommended screening for other major causes of visual disability in Bahrain such as cataract ,Glaucoma and keratoconus.

On a larger scale, according to WHO statistics, there are 253 million people in the world with visual impairment out of which 36 million suffer from blindness. Of those with visual disturbance, there are 124 million suffer from errors of refraction and 65 million suffer from cataract. Majority of these diseases which accounts to more than 75% of the world causes of blindness are avoidable. Bahrain and the GCC countries , according to International Agency for Prevention of blindness, belong to the Eastern Mediterranean region which also comprises parts of Asia and north Africa. In this region there are 23 million people with visual disturbance and 80% of these diseases are avoidable. Such diseases are cataract, glaucoma, errors of refraction and diabetic retinopathy

In addition to this symposium, the University Medical centre has other activities as part of World Sight Day celebrations which included checking vision of school children, and checking eyes of the orphans and the widows with the coordination of the Royal Charity Fund. The University medical centre is part of the Arabian Gulf University and is managed by Dr. Suleiman Al Habib group

Source: Fana News