Despite major advances in eye care there is a significant number of persons of all age groups who cannot have their sight fully restored. The majority of these have some residual vision that can be enhanced or made more useable and utilized for tasks that require vision. Benefits of Low Vision Care reduces the functional impact of vision loss, facilitates child education and development, maintains independence, maintains productive activity, enhances quality of life, improves life satisfaction.

It is estimated that for every million population there are 17.000 people with low vision, one third of this would have an important functional improvement with the low vision care. These numbers are rapidly increasing due to aging of the populations in both developed and more importantly in developing countries and the increasing "epidemic" of diabetes related vision loss.

About 900 children per million populations require low vision care, 106 early intervention and 230 require educational support. An important cause is the increasing of retinopathy of prematurity in Latin America.

What needs to be done ?

• Increase access and demand to comprehensive low vision services to people with visual impairment.
• Develop national policies on comprehensive low vision care.