Visual Impairment
(asked on 9th January 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce levels of preventable blindness.
Prevention, early detection and access to timely treatment are key to preventing avoidable blindness.
The Government has well established programmes on reducing smoking and obesity, both long term risk factors for vision loss.
Early detection is key and free National Health Service sight tests are available to all children, those aged 60 and over, individuals on low incomes or at increased risk of certain eye diseases.
Diabetic retinopathy is a common complication of diabetes which can lead to sight loss. The diabetic retinopathy screening programme offered screening to over three million eligible people during 2016/17.
Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for commissioning secondary care ophthalmology services to meet local needs. Two key initiatives, Getting it Right First Time being led by NHS Improvement and the Elective Care Transformation Programme being led by NHS England have considered, as part of their programmes, what can be done to improve outcomes for ophthalmology patients.
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment’s ‘See the Light’ report, published in June 2018 set out a number of recommendations on this issue. Initial meetings have been held with key stakeholders to discuss the Department and NHS England’s response to the report’s recommendations and these discussions are ongoing.
The report can be found at the following link: