Burden of moderate visual impairment in an urban population in southern India☆
Section snippets
Materials and methods
The design of APEDS is described in detail elsewhere.2, 4 This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad. Those aspects of the study design relevant to this article are mentioned here.
Results
Of the eligible subjects, 2522 (85.4%) were interviewed and examined between October 1996 and June 1997. The age range of these subjects was 1 month to 102 years. A total of 1399 (55.5%) were 30 years of age or older and 1347 (53.4%) were female. Two hundred thirty-two (9.2%) subjects belonged to extreme lower, 920 (36.5%) to lower, 1033 (41%) to middle, and 267 (10.6%) to the upper socioeconomic strata, while 70 (2.8%) subjects refused to give income information. A total of 1556 (61.7%)
Discussion
India is estimated to have one fourth of the world’s visually impaired population, including blindness and moderate visual impairment many fold higher than blindness.1 A comprehensive policy on eyecare is needed in India to deal with this burden of visual impairment in a long-term, sustainable manner. To develop such a policy, reliable population-based information about blindness and moderate visual impairment is needed. We have recently reported data on blindness.4 This article attempts to
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Supported by the Hyderabad Eye Research Foundation, Hyderabad, India.