At present at least 2.2 billion people around the world have a vision impairment, of whom at least 1 billion have a vision impairment that could have been prevented or is yet to be addressed. The world faces considerable challenges in terms of eye care, including inequalities in the coverage …
In Africa's Rift Valley, a simple fly trap is helping to check the spread of the second leading cause of blindness in the world. The inventor David Morley, a retired specialist in tropical child health at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, has based the device on the assumption that …
there is hope in sight for the blind. For the first time in medical history lab-grown corneas have been developed by us scientists. The lab variety resemble the real ones in every respect, even to the degree of cloudiness human corneas get when they come in contact with detergents, shampoos …
Scientists have genetically-engineered a variety of rice that could end vitamin A deficiency in developing countries. The deficiency results in blindness. Researchers at the International Rice Research Institute in Switzerland spliced three genes to make the rice rich in betacarotene, the source of vitamin A. However, the new crop, which …
ABORTED foetuses are the new tools to cure blindness. Researchers transplanted light-sensitive cells from the eyes of aborted foetuses into the eyes of blind adults, enabling them to see partially. Though the experiments have not restored complete vision, its preliminary success have buoyed hopes about future endeavours. The adults who …
THE NGO sector of Orissa has vehemently opposed the bureaucrats of the health and family welfare department of the state after they returned Rs 33 crore out of the Rs 60 crore grant for the 'blindness control programme' of the World Bank. The department said that it could not use …
ONCHOCERCIASIS afflicts a person infected with filaroid worms of the genus Onchocerca, transmitted by biting flies. Onchoceriasis is now endemic in 17 of Uganda's 39 districts, affecting between 1.2 and 1.5 million people mainly in the north and west. One of the reasons for the neglect of the strain of …
AT LEAST partial eyesight to the blind may be restored, say researchers in the us in a recent study. An artificial vision system with tiny TV cameras in eyeglasses sending invisible laser-borne messages to a computer inside the eye would perform this magic. The computer, about the size of the …
MICROCHIPS form the basis of several devices, such as Min (magnetic resonance imaging) scanners and pacemakers, which have revolutionised medical diagnosis and treatment. Now, microchips may also provide relief to many people suffering from blindness. Researchers working on the Project for a Retinal Implant, a joint effort of the Massachusetts …
Millions of kangaroos in the outbacks of Australia could now hope to be saved from a possibly dark fate owing to blindness as scientists have isolated the virus responsible for it. The kangaroo population had been severely mauled by a mysterious affliction which resulted in blindness; blind kangaroos had been …
What are the primary causes of blindness in the world today? How widespread is the problem? There are 23-45 million blind people in the world. We define blindness differently for those 2 figures: "economic blindness" and "social blindness". Economic blindness would be less than 6/60th vision, which is the top …
Warped placements of the green and red cones makes a person colourblind. As a result, 1 colour is replaced by black enhancing the brightness of the other. Scientists at Aston University in the English Midlands are using this as a basis for developing the first test to detect colourblindness in …
About 13,000 eyeballs are collected every year in India, but only about 7,000 of them are actually used in corneal graft surgeries. One of the main reasons for this pathetic situation is that eyebanks in India do not have the facilities to preserve these eyeballs, which have to be used …
INDIA has 12 million blind people and about 8 million people who are sightless in one eye. The main causes of this disability are nutritional deficiency and lack of health education -- blindness can be prevented and cured. "Eye diseases associated with malnutrition are more common in the south than …
