KARACHI: Experts have said that cataract and corneal scarring are the key factors behind alarmingly increase in blindness in Pakistan.

On the World Sight Day on Thursday, they said that of the 1.5 million blind people in Pakistan, approximately 300,000 lived in Sindh.

At least 80 per cent of blindness and visual impairment were preventable or curable, they said, adding that simple and cost effective methods of treatment were available to help decline the cases of blindness.

Experts said that of more than 1.5 million people suffering from blindness in the country, around one million belonged to Punjab, the most populous province. Around 300,000 lived in Sindh, some 150,000 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and more than 50,000 in Balochistan, they added.

Cataract forms more than half of the total causes of blindness in Pakistan. Doctors said cataract was simply an avoidable cause. A paper written by Zahid Hussain Awan, P.S. Mahar and M Saleh Memon put that reason to 51.5pc.

The remaining avoidable causes of blindness are: corneal opacity (11.8pc), uncorrected aphakia (8.6pc), glaucoma (7.1pc), posterior capsular opacification (3.6pc), refractive error (2.7pc) and diabetic retinopathy (0.2pc).

The report calculated that total avoidable causes formed 85.4pc of blindness.

The remaining unavoidable causes are just 14.6pc, which include phthisis/absent globe (2.7pc), macular degeneration (2.1), optic atrophy (0.9pc), amblyopia (0.5pc0 and other causes are 8.4pc.

The report further said disability had often been associated with poverty and the people with disability were amongst the “poorest of the poor”.

It said: “Because of physical and social barriers, people with disability face loss of opportunity and are excluded because of institutional, environmental and attitudinal discrimination.”

It said there were several studies that indicated that people in the lowest socio-economic group shared a greater burden of blindness than those in the higher socio-economic group.

“Some eye diseases, such as trachoma, are known to be a direct consequence of poverty. Blindness as a disability leads to unemployment resulting in loss of income, increased level of poverty, lower standard of living and decrease in affordability of healthcare services. This leads to a vicious cycle of poverty and blindness where majority of the people disabled by blindness are poor and their disability leads to a further decline in their economic productivity and quality of life,” it added.

The experts said blindness had a huge economic cost attached to it. The cost of blindness depended on the cause and duration of blindness as well as on the availability of family members and alternative sources of income. It also depended on the number of economically productive individuals that were affected by blindness, they said.

Across the globe, 39 million people are blind and 246 million people suffer from visual impairment. The experts said some 80pc of 45 million blind people worldwide were over 50 years of age. Majority of the blind people, which was about 90pc, lived in nations where access to eye care was restricted. Out of the eye care services that were administered worldwide, it was known that women and girls received barely 35pc of the care while men and boy received over 64pc, they added.

The World Sight Day is observed for creating awareness about blindness and vision impairment issues which are considered to be international public health concerns.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2016