Every five seconds someone in the world goes blind.
To mark World Sight Day on October 9th this infographic explores some of the facts about vision impairment worldwide.
Today 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide, which is the equivalent of the populations of the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium and Ireland COMBINED.
Almost 40 million people are completely blind and 246 million have low vision. Astonishingly, 80% of all visual impairment can be prevented or cured.
Who is at risk when it comes to vision impairment? About 90% of the world’s visually impaired live in low-income settings, and 82% of people living with blindness are aged 50 and above.
Globally, uncorrected refractive errors are the main cause of moderate and severe visual impairment while cataracts remain the leading cause of blindness in middle- and low-income countries.
