A paper published on 2 Aug 2017 in the Lancet estimates that there were 36 million people who were blind and 217 million people with severe or moderate visual impairment (MSVI), making a total of 253 million people who were visually impaired, in 2015. It also estimates that 1.1 billion people have near-vision impairment—a condition that can be corrected with spectacles.
The paper, published in the Lancet by the Vision Loss Expert Group (VLEG), provides the latest global estimates of the prevalence of blindness and MSVI in the world. By analysing data from 1990 to 2015, the VLEG have employed a sophisticated methodology to produce these detailed estimates, which also includes projections to 2020 for the first time…
