Almost all vision loss in indigenous Australians is unnecessary; it is either preventable or treatable.
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Recent research with a random cluster sample of indigenous people of all ages from 30 communities across Australia found that young Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people have better vision than other Australian children.
However, by the time adults reach the age of 40, those statistics have flipped: indigenous Australians are six times as likely to be blind and three times as likely to have poor vision.
Almost all - 94% in fact - of this vision loss in indigenous Australians is unnecessary; it is either preventable or treatable.
With Jill Keeffe, a program manager at the Vision Cooperative Research Centre in Sydney and other co-authors, we studied children aged five to 15 and adults over the age of 40 in 30 randomly selected communities across the country, from Tasmania to the Torres Strait and the Gold Coast to the Pilbara.
Our research found that rates of low vision in Indigenous children are 1.5% or 5 times less common than mainstream children. While for Indigenous adults, low vision rates are 9.4% or 2.8 times the rate in mainstream and blindness rates are 1.9% or 6.2 times the mainstream rate.
This issue is not new. More than 30 years ago the late eye surgeon Fred Hollows led the national trachoma and eye health program. A cohort of young ophthalmologists worked with him, and I was the assistant director of that program. The data we gathered was the basis of the first national research on the prevalence and cause of vision loss in Indigenous Australians.
We are now revisiting this issue. We have spoken often, as researchers, politicians and concerned members of the community, of closing the gap in health between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. However, the need to see the world clearly - quite literally - has somehow fallen off the agenda in relation to Indigenous health.
This recent study of about 3,000 indigenous Australians shows an improvement from a 1980 study that found 8.2% of indigenous adults aged over 40 were blind. But that's not enough - these results point to a frightening and avoidable level of vision loss in this community.
Australia, through Vision 2020 Australia, is part of a global initiative run by the World Health Organisation to recognize the basic human right to see properly. Think about what it means to see well, even if you are not a white-collar worker: threading a needle, clearing a garden, noticing a sore on a child - none of these tasks can be done easily or competently with poor eyesight.
People with poor vision have a two to four times increased risk of hip fractures, twice the risk of falls and three times the risk of depression. They are twice as likely to need support services or community services.
