Vietnam will focus on activities to prevent avoidable blindness, said Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Viet Tien at the 2nd ASEAN Ophthalmology Society Congress (AOS) held in Hanoi in two days from October 29 to 31.
In the next time, Vietnam will re-arrange the work of the steering board of eye prevention; encourage and call for non-governmental organizations, sponsors and benefactors to help disadvantaged localities in treating eyes for poor people; providing training to more eye doctors; timely discovery of people who are likely to be visually impaired in the community for treating; and increasing international cooperation with nations especially Laos and Cambodia.
Mr. Tien said that blindness and visual impairment is important health matter that the World Health Organization(WHO), governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations pay much attention to blindness. If without timely intervention of local governments and WHO and non-governmental organizations' assistance and efforts of all eye doctors in the globe, the number of visually impaired people will spiral. Approximately 75 millions of people are estimated to be visually impaired and hundreds of millions of people will be blind or have low vision worldwide by 2020.
