Worldwide initiative needed to prevent blindness

WASHINGTON – Rubens Belfort, MD, PhD, urged ophthalmologists and primary care physicians to actively fight blindness worldwide by thinking globally but acting locally.

Dr. Belfort was a keynote speaker at the World Cornea Congress here.

There are many international organizations involved in the fight against blindness, he said, including the World Health Organization and the International Council of Ophthalmology.

One of the most important initiatives in preventing blindness is Vision 2020: The Right to See, Dr. Belfort said. The goal of Vision 2020 is to eradicate preventable blindness around the world by the year 2020.

“It is very important that we all follow the same strategy in order to achieve the same goals,” he said.

There are nearly 50,000 cases of blindness in Brazil and 200,000 in Latin America, Dr. Belfort said.

“If information is power and information is a tool, it is time to start acting,” he said. “There are too many retroactive studies telling us what we already know.”

Diseases such as trachoma, measles and onchocerciasis globally cause the most cases of corneal blindness, he explained.

Areas of the world that do not have a sufficient number of ophthalmologists to diagnose and treat patients’ ocular diseases and deficiencies should encourage primary care physicians to pay close attention to ocular health.

Corneal blindness in children is particularly a high priority, Dr. Belfort said.

“Train the general practitioners and nurses to identify patients who need corneal care,” he said, adding that doctors should also be involved socially and politically. “Help society remove the barriers to allow patients to see us,” he said.

Due to a lack of surgeons, a lack of eye bank professionalism and increased costs, cornea grafts are not an option in many countries, Dr. Belfort said.

“The medicine of 1970 is still not available for most of the world population,” he said. “We are more and more practicing ‘boutique ophthalmology’ and practicing ophthalmology for very rich people, very expensive ophthalmology … but we should never forget the 95% of the population of the world that will never have access to it.”

Despite the graveness of the global situation, Dr. Belfort said he is optimistic that change is possible.

“We have to be active to understand blindness in undeveloped parts of the world as well as developed parts of the world,” he said.