The Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Low-vision Research and habilitation Abstract

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Low vision refers to reduced ability to carry out important life activities including obtaining an education, living and traveling independently, being employed, and enjoying and seeing visual images, due to visual impairment that cannot be corrected with medical treatments, ordinary glasses or contact lenses. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently estimated that as of 2002, there are at least 161 million visually impaired persons worldwide, of which 37 million are blind. The vast majority are from developing countries. Based on reasonable assumptions, an estimated 61 million of the visually impaired population, are likely to benefit from low vision services.
The Oslo Workshop, an assembly of 25 geographically and professionally diverse experts, took place October 17-21, 2004, near Oslo, Norway. This group envisioned a world where all who are permanently visually impaired can realize as much visual function as possible and enjoy the same opportunities and responsibilities as those who are fully sighted. While there are ample economic reasons for society to provide low vision services, such services should be considered a human right to be given independent of economic justification.
The failure to provide appropriate low vision services prevent many individuals from achieving full social including and optimal quality of life, increases costs to society, and deprives society of the human and economic contribution of those individuals. Because the relationship between low vision and blindness has only recently been well understood, low vision has received very little attention by societies worldwide, and in most places has not yet been successfully integrated into the healthcare, education or rehabilitation systems, nor indeed even into public consciousness. This is remarkable as the vast majority of all people identified as visually impaired have low vision.
Since a substantial proportion of the visually impaired population around the world has irreversible, unpreventable low vision, reducing the global impact of visual impairment entails providing low vision services and addressing the specific needs of the low vision population. This should be a goal that stands alongside, rather than within, the goal of eliminating preventable blindness.
The presentation will outline:
· a general framework for low vision service delivery that can be used both to describe existing services throughout the world and to propose improvements to service organizations and processes within existing medical, educational, and rehabilitation facilities, and the development of new services where they currently are within reach or do not exist in developed or developing nations.
· an agenda for research in low vision to support national and international advocacy efforts that form the basis of both civil rights and sound economic policies and services that are based on scientific research, development, and evaluation.
· an international Call to Action for government and NGOs and other stakeholders to raise awareness of low vision, increase resources for low vision research and development, education and rehabilitation, and include these into global healthcare, rehabilitation and education initiatives.

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