Universal eye health coverage: from global policy to country action
The year 2020 marked the end of the global initiative Vision 2020: The Right to Sight launched by World Health Organization (WHO) in 1999 to intensify and accelerate activities to tackle avoidable blindness. Over the three decades of this initiative, four resolutions on avoidable blindness and vision impairment were adopted by the World Health Assembly (WHA; 56.26 [2003], 59.25 [2006], 62.1 [2009] and 66.4 [2013]). Evidence of the impact of these concerted efforts is clear, with a significant reduction in the age-adjusted prevalence of blindness (27% reduction between 1990 and 2020) and a substantial reduction in the number of children and adults who are blind due to vitamin A deficiency and infectious causes, such as onchocerciasis and trachoma.1,2
Despite the successes, eye care services in many countries have been unable to keep pace with the increasing need associated with demographic, behavioural and lifestyle trends that have led, and will continue to lead, to an increase in the number of non-communicable eye conditions. As a result, >1 billion people worldwide have vision impairment that could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed due to causes such as cataracts, myopia, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy.2 To accentuate these challenges, significant inequalities in access to eye care services exist—the burden of eye conditions and vision impairment is greater in low- and middle-income countries and underserved populations, such as people living in rural areas, those with low incomes, women, older people, indigenous populations and ethnic minorities.2
As the eye care sector transitions from Vision 2020: The Right to Sight, it is clear that new strategies are needed to address the current and projected eye care needs.