WHY DO WE DO THIS?
The lack of eye care professionals in sub-Saharan Africa means that, even today, adults and children are still going blind or dying from eye diseases. The data speak for themselves:
World Health Organization data:
There are 7.3 billion people in the world.
253 million are visually impaired and 2.2 billion suffer from near vision problems.
75% of the cases are curables or preventable
89% live in low to middle-income countries
50% of them can’t see simply because they don’t have glasses.
We are not equal when facing a vision loss:
The WHO* warns that “Young children with severe vision impairment often suffer delays in motor, language, emotional, social and cognitive development, with lifelong consequences. At school age, they may have lower levels of academic achievement”.
In addition, “the prevalence of distant vision impairment is four times higher in low- and middle-income regions than in high-income regions (…) Rates of untreated near vision impairment are estimated to be more than 80% in sub-Saharan Africa, while they are less than 10% in the high-income regions of North America, Australasia, Western Europe and Asia/Pacific.
| Spain | Senegal | Mozambique (1) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ophthalmologists | 4.700 | 60 | 25 |
| Ophthalmologists per million inhabitants | 100 | 4 | 0,8 |
| Optometrists | 17.000 | 112 | 50 |
| Optometrists per million inhabitants | 362 | 7 | 1,5 |
* Official WHO website, February 2021
(1) Data published 2023 National Ophthalmology Program Mozambique
