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Elevated rate of blindness found in southern Sudan
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A survey of residents of villages in southern Sudan found a 4.1% prevalence of blindness, more than twice what would be expected based on data from other areas of rural Africa.
Jeremiah Ngondi, MD, of the University of Cambridge, England, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional survey of residents aged 5 years and older living in Sudan's Mankien district. The researchers focused on Mankien after receiving reports of a high incidence of blindness and low vision from local eye surgical camps. Their survey is the first to examine blindness in southern Sudan in 2 decades due to ongoing civil war, the study authors said.
The investigators randomly selected 25 households in each of 22 randomly chosen villages. After surveying and examining 2,499 villagers, the researchers found a 4.1% prevalence of blindness, defined as visual acuity of less than 3/60 in the better eye.
"The World Health Organization considers blindness to be a public health problem when the prevalence of blindness in the general population exceeds 1%. The prevalence of blindness revealed in Mankien [district] greatly exceeds this WHO parameter," the study authors said.
Dr. Ngondi and colleagues also found a 7.7% prevalence of low vision, defined as a visual acuity of at least 3/60 but less than 18/60 in the better eye, and a 4.4% prevalence of monocular visual impairment, defined as visual acuity of at least 18/60 in better eye and less than 18/60 in other eye.
Cataract caused most of the blindness (41.2%), followed by trachoma (35.3%). Trachoma caused most of the low vision (58.1%), followed by cataract (29.3%).
"For planning purposes, it is estimated that up to 6,849 persons had some form of visual impairment in the study population. These data will be used for estimating intervention goals for primary eye care services, eye surgery, trachoma control, and rehabilitation of the blind," the study authors said.
Another study by Dr. Ngondi and colleagues found that among 3,567 residents of the Mankien district, 57.5% of children aged 1 to 9 years had early stages of trachoma infection.
"There is an urgent need to implement the surgery, antibiotics, facial cleanliness and environmental change strategy for trachoma control in Mankien [district], and the end of the 21-year civil war affords an opportunity to do this," Dr. Ngondi and colleagues said.
Both studies are published online on the Public Library of Science Web site.