Around 85% of the information we receive through our sense organs comes to us through sight. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 253 million people worldwide live with visual impairment and 36 million are blind. It is also estimated that 75% of cases of blindness could have been prevented or treated if adequate eye care services had been available and accessible.

Eye health is essential for our well-being, quality of life, interpersonal relationships and professional performance. In Portugal and around the world, eye care is essential to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases that can lead to blindness. Investing in the population's eye health significantly reduces the costs associated with reduced productivity and prolonged medical care. It can mean the difference between being dependent on someone else's care due to visual impairment or being completely autonomous and able to read, drive and work.

Worldwide, access to medical care in the field of eye health varies greatly between countries and regions and even within countries. In many developing regions, access to eye care services is very limited due to factors such as lack of resources, inadequate infrastructure and a shortage of specialized health professionals. In these countries, international organizations and NGOs play a crucial role in providing eye care in underserved areas. It is also in these countries that blindness rates are highest.

Refractive errors and cataracts are responsible for more than 50% of blindness cases worldwide and are easily "cured" through correction with glasses and surgery, respectively, restoring normal vision to this large section of the population. Other diseases that cause blindness in these countries, such as trachoma or river blindness, are the subject of prevention and treatment campaigns in different parts of the world, often through international organizations and NGOs.

The "Vision 202/20 - The right to sight" program (1999-2020) launched and led by the WHO and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness was a global initiative aimed at preventing and treating the main causes of avoidable blindness, which included cataracts, trachoma, onchocerciasis, childhood blindness, refractive errors and low vision.

This programme has been structured at a global level, with government entities, NGOs, academic bodies, public, private and social entities, professional organizations and associations. It has achieved very significant results in reducing blindness worldwide by improving access to medical care, prevention, large-scale administration of medicines to treat trachoma and onchocerciasis, training programs for eye care providers, millions of cataract surgeries and large-scale correction of refractive errors.

Despite the successes of this program, there are still huge challenges to solve around the world and particularly in countries with low economic resources where access to medical care in the area of eye health is very limited. Efforts have been made to continue the work under the coordination of the WHO in order to eradicate preventable blindness and severe vision loss.

And in Portugal? In Portugal, as in many countries, blindness and low vision are major public health problems. It is estimated that there are around 160,000 visually impaired people in Portugal and 25,000 are considered blind. There is an asymmetry in access to medical care in the area of eye health, with better care on the coast and worse in the south of the country and inland.

According to a study carried out by the Catholic University's Center for Applied Studies and the Portuguese Ophthalmology Society, access to health care in the field of Ophthalmology is divided between the private sector (around 57%), the National Health System (35%) and the social sector. When faced with eye health problems, 77 % of people were diagnosed by an ophthalmologist, which seems to reveal a concern on the part of the population to seek out a professional prepared for this role.

With regard to children's eye health, 23.5% of the people surveyed admitted that they had never had their children's eye health assessed and only 45% admitted that they had taken their children to a children's eye health screening.

The same study also showed two other worrying figures: around 13% of people had never been to an appointment to assess their eye health and 28% said that they only went to an appointment when they felt they had serious problems.

Waiting until you lose your sight to see an ophthalmologist and not taking preventative action can lead to late diagnosis and irreversible loss of sight that could have been avoided. In fact, the main causes of blindness and low vision in Portugal include three diseases in which prevention, timely diagnosis and treatment can prevent serious vision loss and blindness.

These are diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and glaucoma. Contrary to what you might think, they are not hereditary diseases or cataracts. In around 90% of cases of diabetic retinopathy, blindness can be avoided with good metabolic control of diabetes and timely diagnosis and treatment of retinopathy. With regard to AMD, we currently have drugs that allow us to treat the "wet" form of the disease and significantly reduce the rate of blindness, provided that treatment is started early, within the first two weeks of the onset of symptoms (distortion of images, sudden loss of vision).

It is important that access to medical care is swift, since when treatment is started with very low vision (in the vast majority of cases due to late access to treatment) it is rarely possible to regain the vision to read or drive again. With regard to glaucoma, early diagnosis and appropriate treatment can prevent progression to blindness in 95% of cases.

There is therefore a huge amount of work still to be done to reduce the rate of blindness and low vision in Portugal. It is clear that a significant proportion of the population does not have their eye health assessed as early or as regularly as is recommended. It is necessary to improve communication and carry out awareness-raising actions in order to increase the population's awareness and proactivity with regard to their eye health.

Easy access to ophthalmic care is also essential to improving the eye health of the Portuguese.