News reports from the conference

South African expert pleads for more focus on glaucoma

Glaucoma continues to be a major cause of blindness worldwide and needs more attention both in the developing and in the developed world.

In a plenary lecture on the current epidemiology of glaucoma, Dr. Colin Cook professor and chair of ophthalmology at the University of Cape Town stated, "We have failed in preventing the visual loss from this disease."

He said the most recent figures from 2006 indicate that 60 million people worldwide have glaucomatous optic neuropathy, with 75% of these cases being primary open-angle glaucoma.

Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness globally, stated Cook, who quoted the 2010 World Health Organization estimate that 4.5 million people had blindness that was caused by open-angle glaucoma. This figure is expected to rise to 5.9 million by 2020.

While prevalence data on the condition is fairly accessible, Cook said it is more difficult to obtain incidence data both on glaucoma itself and on the rate of blindness associated with the condition.

Cook was critical of the fact that glaucoma was not included as one of the five conditions of focus of the World Health Organization's VISION 2020 initiative that aims to eliminate avoidable blindness.

In response to Cook's presentation, it was pointed out that timely diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma is still a problem in developed nations such as Canada, especially in underserviced areas such as the North.