Press release issued: 14 June 2010.
The number of Scots with sight loss could double to almost 400,000 between now and 2030, the Royal National Institute of Blind People Scotland has warned.
And in a new report - published at the start of Eye Health Week today - the charity has estimated the total cost to the public sector in Scotland to be £194m a year.
But this cost will increase significantly because the elderly population is set to rise by 62 per cent over the next two decades. Already up to one in six out-patient appointments at some Scottish hospitals are for eye-care.
RNIB Scotland is calling for the Scottish Parliament to implement a national prevention strategy.
Director John Legg said: "The annual cost of sight loss per person is around £17,600 - roughly equivalent to ten hospital admissions. When you add in the indirect costs of sight loss it totals £434m. Apart from the tragic personal price to be paid, at a time when our public finances are being squeezed massively we need to do everything we possibly can to reduce the number who will need treatment."
The World Health Assembly has estimated that 50 per cent of sight loss could be avoided through measures such as public awareness, sight-screening and anti-smoking campaigns. For example, for every 1,000 smokers who quit there would be an estimated 12 fewer cases of blindness.
But a preventative approach must target those most at risk, insists RNIB Scotland. While Scotland is a world-leader in eye-healthcare provision, it also has one of the poorest health records in Western Europe. With 228,000 Scots affected by diabetes, diabetic retinopathy is now the leading cause of blindness among the working-age population. "Someone with diabetes has a 10 to 20 times greater chance of being registered blind," points out Legg. "However, early diagnosis and treatment can prevent up to 98 per cent of severe sight loss and the earlier the treatment the more likely it is to be effective.
Other groups can be harder to reach. People from some ethnic minority backgrounds are also more vulnerable to sight-threatening conditions: those of South Asian origin are six times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than Caucasians, while some forms of glaucoma are three times more prevalent among people of Afro-Caribbean and Chinese descent and often more severe. People with learning disabilities are even more vulnerable. Of the 120,000 people in Scotland who have a learning disability, at least 30 per cent will have significant undetected sight loss.
John Legg commented: "We have to do everything we can to prevent or minimise sight loss. Maintaining our investment in things such as free eye-tests, which can pick up the early danger signals now, will save us much more money in years to come.
"We do have to recognise the urgency of the situation. If a new virus was discovered that threatened to cause sight loss in 3,000 adults a year in Scotland it would receive the highest of priorities. Yet because this problem has been with us since the inception of the NHS it has become just part of the accepted background."
At present, around 37,000 people are formally registered as blind or partially sighted in Scotland, but the true total is reckoned to be around 180,000.