Bangalore: For them, life is a blur. World Sight Day (October 12) came and went, but for those who are in the grey area between total blindness and perfect sight, it is a constant struggle to lead a productive life.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the theme for this year's World Sight Day as "Low Vision and Refractive Error" and the organisation is focussing on the issues of preventable blindness and early detection. People with low vision are often identified as blind and many do not have access to rehabilitation services for their specific needs.

According to the WHO, a low-vision person is one who "has a significant visual handicap but also has usable residual vision." The main causes of low vision may be cataract, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy (eye problem caused by diabetes), macular degeneration and other genetic diseases.

Globally, in 2002 more than 161 million people were visually impaired, of whom 124 million people had low vision. Worldwide for each visually impaired person, an average of 3.4 people have low vision.

Except for the most developed countries, cataract remains the leading cause of blindness in all regions of the world. Associated with ageing, it is even more significant as a cause of low vision.

"Even though many forms of blindness are preventable and low vision problems can be treated, in the rural areas lack of support groups and access to health services leads to people not being aware that this can be prevented," said Subhash M, a visually impaired person.

"For example, people in villages may not know that giving leafy green vegetables and fruits may prevent a child from developing blindness in future. Night blindness, one of the major problems among those with low vision, can be treated by Vitamin A drops. There was a need to disseminate such important information among the rural folk," he added.

He said that often when parents, from a rural background, come to know that one of their children is gradually losing eyesight, they enrol them in a residential programme for the blind and not much effort is made to help them to lead a productive life with whatever little eyesight they have.

Arun Samprathi, consultant paediatric ophthalmologist, Narayana Nethralaya, said there was a lot of awareness about cataract as the leading cause of blindness of late but there was lack of awareness about childhood blindness. "Child's eye is maturing in the first eight years of life and whether the child will develop short sight and long sight is determined in those years. If effective interventions are made early and eye examinations are done regularly, problems of low vision and subsequent blindness can be prevented," Dr. Samprathi said.

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