First of all I have a confession: I am cranky. Thursday, transportation left me stranded. Thank God for compassionate souls with cars. Yesterday, I had a full schedule of clients and lunch was at 4 pm. Hungry! I have a 12-hour – count them, 12! – webinar to listen to and about six reports to write. I have gotten ridiculously behind and my days don’t have enough hours.
Now, I understand I generally do this to myself. I also understand I generally am able to pull my own proverbial fat out of the fire so most people don’t worry about (or even listen to!) me. [Sorry, did you say something Sue? ::grin::] But – and that is a big but – I feel like whining and Lin showed me something to whine about!
To wit: “Breakthrough treatment may cure 50% of all cases of blindness”! What the rinky dink is that all about? It turns out the article is all about the stem cell work just published. Huh?
Okay. Age-Related Macular Degeneration is our nemesis but on the radar of the world in general, it is pretty much a blip! One blip. A little blip at that.
VisionAware reminds us that 90% of all of the 39 million folks who are blind actually live in the low-income countries of the world. Looking at our demographics, for the most part, honey, that ain’t us. Yes, AMD is the leading cause of blindness in the developed world, but if you live in dozens of other places, you may not keep your sight long enough to even think about the possibility of developing AMD.
In 2017 the World Health Organization (Who? The World Health Organization. WHO? That’s right. What? No, WHO…with apologies to Abbott and Costello.?) estimated there are 1.4 million children worldwide with irreversible blindness. There are 19 million children in this world with vision impairment. Of those, 12 million have refractive errors. In other words, we could cure 12 million cases of childhood visual impairment with glasses!
Un-operated cataracts are the major cause of blindness worldwide with a 35% share of the pie. Please note that word is un-operated not inoperable. These people could be made to see with a simple operation.
Uncorrected refractive errors come in in second place with a 21% share of the pie. Add 35% and 21% and you already have 56% of the causes of blindness, immediately putting to lie the 50% “cure” claim of that nutty headline.
So, worldwide, how much moderate-to-severe vision loss is due to age-related macular degeneration? About 8%. Please note the words did not say blindness. They said moderate-to-severe vision loss. There is a big difference.
Do I like being visually impaired? Not by a long shot! Do I want a cure? Uhh, yeah. But do I want to feel sorry for myself and swallow every crazy headline that gets published. No!
The treatments and eventually the cures are coming, but they are not here yet. A little skepticism about some of the claims out there now is a good thing.
And, the truth of the matter is, most of us – yes, us with AMD – are pretty dang lucky. Our impairment has hit us late in life. I became myopic at age 12. What would my life have been like if my parents could not have gotten me glasses? How much human potential are we wasting because CHILDREN cannot see?
Think about it.
Written March 24th, 2018