![]() ![]() ![]() Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year war. For his first assignment, he was based in Eritrea and was tasked with developing a national human resource for eye health plan, with the aim of training optometry diploma graduates to provide basic primary eyecare. That’s why we reduce poverty, improve education, and so much more.”įollowing the completion of his Commonwealth Shared Scholarship in 2009, Ving Fai joined Australian eyecare NGO, the Brien Holden Vision Institute (Africa) Trust (BHVI), based in South Africa, where he took up the position of lecturer. “People also now understand that improved vision is very closely related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), for example, improved health, improved wellbeing, improved work productivity. “I think eye health in general has been slowly gaining attention since 1999, when ‘VISION 2020: The Right to Sight’ started” Ving Fai says, in reference to the global programme launched by WHO and International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. Understanding and researching the needs of countries in relation to eye health programmes, thus plays an important role in identifying appropriate and sustainable approaches to combatting preventable blindness and other treatable eye diseases. Instead, several countries rely on NGOs to deliver short-term eye health programmes and interventions, resulting in limited coverage or passive eye health seeking behaviour. Despite the importance of eye health globally, in many countries eye health is still not part of national health plans and does not receive sustained funding. Of those, 1 billion have a preventable vision impairment. © 2017 The Authors Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics © 2017 The College of Optometrists.Commonwealth Alumnus Ving Fai Chan shares his experience and results on building training programmes and centres to deliver basic eyecare in low-resource settings.īlindness and vision impairment affects at least 2.2 billion people around the world according to the WHO World Report on Vision 2019. We find a lack of high quality evidence to support using BB spectacle lenses for the general population to improve visual performance or sleep quality, alleviate eye fatigue or conserve macular health.īlue light blocking macular changes sleep-wake cycle spectacles systematic review visual performance. We found no studies investigating effects on macular structure or function. A study involving normal participants found no observed difference in sleep quality. One study reported a small improvement in sleep quality in people with self-reported insomnia after wearing high compared to low-BB lenses (MD = 0.80 ) using a 10-point Likert scale. There was no evidence of inter-group differences for either low BB (MD = 0.00 ) or high BB lenses (MD = -0.05 ), nor evidence of a difference in the proportion of participants showing an improvement in symptoms of eyestrain or eye fatigue. Both studies compared eyestrain symptoms with Likert scales. There was no observed difference between low BB and standard lens groups, but there was a less negative change in CFF between the high and low BB groups (MD = 1.81 ). ![]() Another study measured critical fusion frequency (CFF), as a proxy for eye fatigue, on wearers of low and high BB lenses, pre- and post- a two-hour computer task. One study compared the effect of BB lenses with clear lenses on contrast sensitivity (CS) and colour vision (CV) using a pseudo-RCT crossover design there was no observed difference between lens types (log CS Mean Difference (MD) = -0.01, CV total error score on 100-hue MD = 1.30 ). Three studies (with 136 participants) met our inclusion criteria these had limitations in study design and/or implementation. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane tool. We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library and clinical trial registers, until 30 April 2017. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs), recruiting adults from the general population, which investigated the effect of BB spectacle lenses on visual performance, symptoms of eyestrain or eye fatigue, changes to macular integrity and subjective sleep quality. The aim of this review was to investigate the relative benefits and potential harms of these lenses. Blue-blocking (BB) spectacle lenses, which attenuate short-wavelength light, are being marketed to alleviate eyestrain and discomfort when using digital devices, improve sleep quality and potentially confer protection from retinal phototoxicity. ![]()
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