Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Public Health Aspects of Opthalmic Disease: Introduction

Public Health Aspects of Opthalmic Disease: Introduction Alfred Sommer Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, 615 North Wolfe Street, Suite 1041, Baltimore, Maryland 21205-2179 Visually disabling diseases are particularly topical as we grapple with new ways to deliver health services, recognize the imperative of functional status and its impact on quality of life, and seek new opportunities for prevention. It is also timely. Rigorous population-based studies in the U.S. and elsewhere are, for the first time, revealing the magnitude, causes, and impact of disabling ocular disease. The impacts of visual impairment and blindness were emphasized by the World Bank's landmark publication, World Development Report 1993: Investing in Health (26). It introduced the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) as a basis for quantifying the global burden of disease and the relative costeffectiveness of alternative interventions. The most cost-effective is $1 per DALY gained from vitamin A distribution to prevent blindness. In the United States and other developed countries, a considerableproportion of visual impairment can be corrected with appropriate spectacles. Blindness, at either the U S . (20/200 or worse) or WHO (worse than 20/400) definitions, inevitably represents established pathology (23). Prevalence rates of blindness increase with age, particularly among the elderly (9,23), secondary to http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Annual Review of Public Health Annual Reviews

Public Health Aspects of Opthalmic Disease: Introduction

Sommer, A
Annual Review of Public Health , Volume 17 (1) – May 1, 1996
Download PDF
5 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/annual-reviews/public-health-aspects-of-opthalmic-disease-introduction-TEgSsWu7WM
Publisher
Annual Reviews
Copyright
Copyright 1996 Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
Subject
Review Articles
ISSN
0163-7525
eISSN
1545-2093
DOI
10.1146/annurev.pu.17.050196.000555
pmid
8724219
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Alfred Sommer Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, 615 North Wolfe Street, Suite 1041, Baltimore, Maryland 21205-2179 Visually disabling diseases are particularly topical as we grapple with new ways to deliver health services, recognize the imperative of functional status and its impact on quality of life, and seek new opportunities for prevention. It is also timely. Rigorous population-based studies in the U.S. and elsewhere are, for the first time, revealing the magnitude, causes, and impact of disabling ocular disease. The impacts of visual impairment and blindness were emphasized by the World Bank's landmark publication, World Development Report 1993: Investing in Health (26). It introduced the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) as a basis for quantifying the global burden of disease and the relative costeffectiveness of alternative interventions. The most cost-effective is $1 per DALY gained from vitamin A distribution to prevent blindness. In the United States and other developed countries, a considerableproportion of visual impairment can be corrected with appropriate spectacles. Blindness, at either the U S . (20/200 or worse) or WHO (worse than 20/400) definitions, inevitably represents established pathology (23). Prevalence rates of blindness increase with age, particularly among the elderly (9,23), secondary to

Journal

Annual Review of Public Health – Annual Reviews

Published: May 1, 1996

There are no references for this article.