Mr Effendy Bin Hashim, a practising optometrist and an expert in public health for eye care begins by helping us understand the blindness and visual impairment classification by the World Health Organization (WHO).
He walks us through the Vision Atlas website from the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) by showing us the prevalence of vision loss across the world, inequality in access to eye care by gender and the primary causes of vision loss. He briefly lists the main causes of global blindness and visual impairment which is uncorrected refractive errors, cataract, AMD, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy.
Then, he glanced through the ‘6 Building Blocks’ of the health system approach by WHO that shows how people, resources and their actions are organised to promote, maintain and restore health and the optometrist role within the blocks.
As per the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we learn about the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) which means that anyone who needs health care can access quality health services without the risk of financial harm and how optometrist can take part to achieve this.
Lastly, we go through the WHO’s World Report on Vision. The report mentions two key indicators which include: (a) Effective Coverage of Cataract Surgery and (b) Effective Coverage of Refractive Error. Mr Hashim summarises optometrist role in community empowerment in the prevention of blindness as a conclusion for his talk. The session ended with a Q and A with the live audience.
References
Website
Vision Atlas – The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB)
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