The Global Vision Database – modeling the current and changing burden of eye disease

Abstract

SummaryThe Global Vision Database has been established by an international consortium of 79 ophthalmologists and optometrists with an interest in the epidemiology of eye disease (The Vision Loss Expert Group, VLEG). This is an extremely comprehensive database of high quality population‐based prevalence eye surveys, dating from 1980 to 2015 from published and unpublished sources. The VLEG have published estimates of numbers blind and vision impaired by region worldwide by age, by sex and by cause. Working with the World Health Organisation, the group has been able to model the change in cause‐specific prevalence of vision loss over time, reporting recently the reduction in age‐standardised blindness prevalence over this time period. This talk will describe the project, the model used and the most recent findings and projections and introduce the audience to the visualisations project that makes this data accessible to any internet user.