Gender And Eye Health

On 8 October this year, how many of us were aware that the world was focussed on women’s eye-health?

To mark the occasion of World Sight Day – and its theme this year of, “Gender And Eye Health” – Jerusalem Scene decided to devote its Winter 09 edition to examining some of the ways in which blindness particularly affects women and – also – at how the St John Eye Hospital Group works with the female population in the OPT.

World Sight Day (WSD) is a yearly event, held on the second Thursday of October in an attempt to direct global attention towards blindness and vision impairment. It is coordinated by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) under the VISION 2020 Global Initiative, which is a joint health partnership between IAPB and the World Health Organization (WHO).

This year’s theme of “Gender and Eye Health” recognises that:

1. two-thirds of blind people worldwide are female;

2. in many countries, male access to eye care is twice that of female;

3. this inequity can be, and is, successfully addressed through targeted strategies.

Evidence suggests that in most developing countries, women are less likely to receive eye care services than men, particularly services that will prevent or treat blinding conditions. In the St John Eye Hospital Group’s own 2008 epidemiological study of eye disease in the OPT, it was noted that, ‘women have the greatest burden of eye disease… The current proportion of blindness and the fact that they have less surgical coverage than men requires immediate attention in terms of service resourcing and promotion’.

Added to the fact that more than half of the elderly population is female, and that the natural incidence of some blinding diseases (cataract and trachoma) is higher among women than men, the result is a situation where women account for 60-65% of blind people across the world.

In keeping with the WSD gender theme, then, we acknowledge that an awareness of this problem does need to be encouraged and highlight here for you just a few of the women we have been working with recently.