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New York - 158 Million Need Glasses Worldwide |
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The study, published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, was conducted by researchers from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of School of Public Health in Baltimore, Australia's International Center for Eyecare Education and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and the Vision Research Institute in Africa.
The study estimated nearly 158 million people globally suffer with vision impairment resulting from uncorrected refractive error -- which can usually be eliminated with an eye examination and a pair of eyeglasses.
"The economic gains that could be made if eyeglasses were provided to everyone in need are substantial," study author Kevin Frick of Johns Hopkins said in a statement.
"The Western Pacific region, which includes China and Vietnam, has the highest estimated number of cases of uncorrected refractive error at 62 million and is responsible for almost half of the potential loss of productivity. The Southeast Asia region, encompassing Bangladesh, India and Nepal, has 48.7 million cases."
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Read Comments (5) — Post Yours »
1
Jun 07, 2009 at 04:12 PM Anonymous Says:
Maybe Obama should start supplying ppl with glasess, with "cutting" the deficit in mind.
2
Jun 07, 2009 at 04:22 PM Use Your Head Says:
Well he has been hailed as a visionary
3
Jun 07, 2009 at 05:51 PM Anonymous Says:
Remember, when you get new prescription glasses, be sure to donate your old ones. Most opticians have drop off boxes and Lions Clubs across the country collect and distrubute old glasses.
4
Jun 07, 2009 at 06:44 PM Anonymous Says:
We should discuss the issue of cataracts. There are over 25 million people worldwide who are blind due to cataracts. This represents around half the cases of blindness worldwide. In developed countries, almost everyone who need catact surgery gets it. In lesser developed countries there are some charities which perform cataract surgery. Some of these charities have pioneered very low cost, high quality cataract surgery. It has gotten to the point that someone can be cured from blindness due to cataracts for $40.
5
Jun 08, 2009 at 09:13 AM Jimmy37 Says:
Don't you just love these BS numbers? Make them big enough and scary enough and people will start listening. However, is this a solution looking for a problem?? Odds are the people that need the glasses are subsistence farmers who see things up close. Since most people are near-sighted anyway, glasses would not improve their productivity much. So why look to waste the money?? Seems like these researchers talked someone into funding a study so they could travel and write about it.