Clipping of news on Brazilian Culture, Law and Citizenship
11/10/2012
This article was translated by an automatic translation system, and was therefore not reviewed by people.
Brasília - In Brazil, there are more than 6.5 million people with visual impairment, and 582 000 6 million blind and low vision, according to the 2010 Census, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). It is in the interest of preventing this situation from getting worse which is celebrated today (11) in the country the World Sight Day, the main action of the Program Vision 2020: The Right to Sight, a joint initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB). The date is always the second Thursday of October.
The program's goal is to eliminate avoidable blindness worldwide by the year 2020. That's because up to 80% of cases of blindness resulting from preventable causes and / or treatable, but every five seconds one person goes blind in the world and a child loses their sight every minute. Are 285 million people worldwide living with low vision or blindness. Of these, 39 million are blind and 246 million have moderate or severe visual impairment.
According to the president of the Brazilian Council of Ophthalmology (CBO), Marco Antonio Rey Faria, campaigns such as the World Sight Day is important to raise awareness about the need for specialized medical support, to prevent eye problems worsen and end resulting in blindness, which could be avoided in 80% of cases.
According to the doctor, many vision-related diseases have no symptoms and, when discovered, are already in an advanced stage and difficult regression. "It is the case of glaucoma, the leading cause of blindness worldwide, and, in Brazil, more than 1 million people are carriers of the disease," says Rey Faria.
Glaucoma is characterized by increased pressure intraocultar - explains the President of the CBO - which leads to a progressive atrophy of the optic nerve, if not controlled, and compromises the patient's field of vision. "In the final phase, it is as if he is just looking for a keyhole," explains the doctor.
Despite the gravity, glaucoma can now be successfully treated with both drugs as by laser surgery to implantation of valves in the affected region. The same occurs with other eye diseases, according to the doctor because "medicine is very advanced and, with current techniques, the vast majority of eye disease is easily treated when discovered early."
Source: ANS
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This article was translated by an automatic translation system, and was therefore not reviewed by people.