All Eyes Here: Vision Loss is Increasing Every Year
Over 50,000 Canadians lose their eyesight every year. This number is expected to increase dramatically in the next 10 years as people grow older. By 2036, Canada will have roughly 10.9 million seniors, twice what it was in 2009.
More than 5.5 million Canadians suffer from eye diseases that can result in some loss of sight. Currently, about 500,000 Canadians live with some form of vision loss that significantly affects their lifestyle and health. For instance, people with vision loss fall twice as often, experience depression thrice as much, and have twice the mortality rate compared to their counterparts of similar age without eyesight issues.
Vision Health Month: Learn How Vision Loss is Preventable
The International Federation on Ageing (IFA) introduced Vision Health Month in 2016 as part of the Eye See You program to educate Canadians about their vision health.
The weakening or loss of eyesight as we grow older is not inevitable, according to Dr. Jane Barratt, Secretary General of the IFA. “Today, Canada faces a growing – yet preventable – crisis in vision health which is likely to compromise the functional ability, as well as the social and economic contributions, of older Canadians. We cannot look away. Now more than ever, we need to resist the urge to simply accept deterioration in our eyesight as an inevitable by-product of aging. Aging doesn’t have to mean vision loss or blindness – but Canadians must be informed and advocate for their own eye health and this is what the Eye See You campaign is all about.”
The Eye See You program reminds Canadians this Vision Health Month to open discourse with their eye doctor, find out about possible dangers to their vision health, and how they can be prevented. It also encourages them to speak up for government policies that provide treatments proven clinically effective.
To learn more, read the full article at Newswire.