The Director General made this observation participating at a seminar held for Journalists parallel to World Glaucoma Week which is now on from March 09 to 13.
This year's theme is "Beat Invisible Glaucoma".
Approximately 314 million people worldwide live with serious vision impairment. Of these, 37 million people are blind and 124 million have low vision. Also 153 million people are vision impaired due to uncorrected refractive.
In Sri Lanka around 200,000 people are believed to be blind out of which 12.3 percent are blind due to Glaucoma. Another 400,000 are having low vision.
“This is a disease which damages the optic nerve. First, peripheral vision gets affected and gradually it leads to complete loss of eyesight. Since there are no symptoms at early stage, we advise people to go to an eye specialist for glaucoma test,” Dr.Mahipala said.
He further noted that 51 eye clinics will be held island wide, on March 12, to detect Glaucoma patients.
