Cataract surgery programmes in Africa
- Correspondence to: Tien Yin Wong MD, PhD, Centre for Eye Research Australia, University of Melbourne, 32 Gisborne Street, Victoria 3002, Australia; twongunimelb.edu.au
Towards evidence based public health
Readers of the BJO will be aware that cataract is the leading cause of blindness in Africa, affecting an estimated half of the seven million blind people in that continent.1 This number is likely to increase substantially, as approximately 600 000 Africans become blind from cataract each year. Despite the enormity of the problem, few cataract operations are performed in Africa. The cataract surgery rate (CSR), a measure of the volume of cataract surgery performed in a population, is about 500 per million per year in Africa. To tackle cataract blindness, the Vision 2020 initiative, a programme involving the World Health Organization, the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness, and various governmental and non-governmental organisations, aims to increase the CSR in Africa to about 2000 per million per year.2
Substantial progress has been made on several fronts over the past few years. There has been a steady stream of information on the epidemiology, distribution, and impact of cataract in different parts of Africa.3,4 There is also increasing evidence that well designed and well executed cataract surgery programmes can provide effective high volume and high quality cataract surgical services in selected communities in Africa. …
