To mark World Sight Day on the 9th of October, world-first research reveals that delivering six simple, cost-effective eye health priorities like eye tests in schools and distributing on-the-spot reading glasses could unlock a ₹3.6 lakh crore for the Indian economy every year, with a ₹16 return for every ₹1 invested.
The global Value of Vision report by IAPB, Seva Foundation and Fred Hollows Foundation, was launched during the United Nations General Assembly at a high-level meeting hosted by IAPB and The United Nations Friends of Vision Group.
For World Sight Day, IAPB’s Love Your Eyes campaign has launched the exclusive national data showing how India can benefit from prioritising eye health, urging everyone to love their eyes by getting an eye test.
Approximately 70 crore people in India live with avoidable sight loss. The personal and economic costs of sight loss are wide-ranging, including unemployment, lower educational attainment, reduced income, increased caregiving burden that predominantly falls to women, mental ill health, and increased risk of injury and illness.
For India, a ₹22,100 crore investment in delivery would generate annual gains of over ₹3.6 lakh crore, including:
- A ₹2.27 lakh crore boost from improved occupational productivity
- A ₹78,700 crore boost from increased employment
- Education gains are equivalent to 9,60,000 extra years of schooling
- A ₹40,800 crore boost from averted caregiving
- Over 827,000 fewer people living with depression
- 65,000 transport injuries and mortalities averted
Behind these figures are real people whose lives are changed when they gain access to sight-saving care. Tula, 19, from Phangulgavhan, Maharashtra, had to drop out of college due to his poor vision before regaining his sight with a pair of glasses.
“When I could not see the blackboard, I thought my dream of studying was over. The day I received my glasses, I felt like I had been given my life back,” says Tula.
The report lays out six priority areas for governments to prevent sight loss: early detection through vision screenings in the community, giving out reading glasses on the spot where needed, increasing capacity in the eye health workforce, boost surgical productivity and teams, removing barriers to accessing eye health like cost, distance and stigma, and making cataract surgery even better with innovative training techniques, wider use of biometry and stronger minimum post-operation care standards.
