Development Ratings

While poor eyesight due to refractive error – long or short sight – might not be considered a disability in developed countries, the lack of access in the developing world to the simple remedy of spectacles or pairs of glasses means that ordinary activities are potentially extremely difficult or impossible, making many people functionally blind. Being unable to see the blackboard or write would hamper educational progress, and difficulty doing detailed work or discriminating between similar items would restrict productive employment. As with more obviously disabled people who require physical aids to function, such as wheelchairs or hearing aids, many vision impaired people just need a simple aid, spectacles, to lead a normal life.

Some 300 million people in the developing world have a visual impairment, much of it preventable or treatable (Source: WHO). Impairments and disabilities in developing countries are a much higher percentage of the population than in the developed world, typically up to 20% versus around 10%, due to nutritional deficiencies, birth complications, conflict, poor sanitation, pollution, and the general effects of poverty. 98% of disabled children in developing countries do not attend school, and disabled girls are even less likely to do so than disabled boys. Even in countries where the mortality rate for able-bodied children under five is below 20%, the equivalent figure for disabled children is believed to be up to a horrifying 80%. Clearly, visual impairment in a developing country would pose significant problems to normal living and rank as a disability.

James Wolfensohn, the former President of the World Bank, has said “Unless disabled people are brought into the development mainstream, it will be impossible to cut poverty in half by 2015 (the Millennium Development Goal) or to give every girl and boy the chance to achieve a primary education”. Impaired people require higher incomes than the able-bodied to maintain the same standard of living, in this case to buy spectacles, and yet will generally have lower ones, due to lack of education and opportunities, poor equipment and facilities, discrimination, and traditional and cultural taboos. Poverty is both a cause and a consequence of disability.

Most vision-related charities address serious sight issues through medical intervention or schools for the blind and visually impaired. While some eye treatment is medicinal, surgical solutions require high cost specialist facilities, and treatment primarily from foreign medical practitioners, as well as sterile conditions and follow-up care. Lions Clubs International collects some spectacles in the UK, for straight-forward charitable distribution in Africa by a French organisation, but the vast majority of collected spectacles in the UK are for Vision Aid Overseas. Sightsavers International also addresses refractive error but its main work is medical and surgical.