$28bn global investment in eye care means $202bn annual savings: study

As an indication of the immensity of any program to implent the study findings, the $202 billion compares to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showing $250 billion in total retail sales in Australia during 2011 and total $.1.26 trillion market capitalisation of shares listed on the Australian Securities Exchange – i.e. 20 per cent of the latter.
A press release issued by the BHVI gives no indication of how or by whom such an ambitious program could be executed, however it would logically involve persons and/or organisations experienced in implenting a program of the likely size, rather than it being in the hands of people and organisations who are willing but without experience in implentation of a program of such magnitude.
In the press release, Professor Brien Holden, chief executive officer of the eponymous BHVI organisation, said: “Spending $28 billion to train eye-care personnel, establish infrastructure and provide spectacles is a drop in the ocean compared with the annual cost to the global economy.
“By restoring people’s vision, we’re generating massive economic benefits for society. A trained eye-care provider can assess someone’s vision correction need and prescribe and fit a pair of glasses in around 30 minutes. A pair of spectacles can be made available for as little as two dollars.”
The press release says the study calculated the cost of training 47,000 eye-care professionals to assess vision and 18,000 optical dispensers to provide the eyeglasses plus the expense of building facilities for th to operate in. The investment would be enough to cover costs for five years, after which revenue generated by the services would sustain th, according to the study.
Dr David Wilson, PhD, research manager for Asia-Pacific at the BHVI observed: “Even when conservative assumptions were used, the cost of establishing systs to correct all vision impairing refractive error in the world is only about 2.4 per cent of the estimated five-year productivity loss associated with distance-only vision impairing refractive error.”
“The study also does not factor in the economic burden of presbyopia,” Mr Tim Fricke, former BHVI researcher and author of the paper, said.
“The cost only applies to distance vision impairment, and there are about five times as many people who have uncorrected near vision impairment. Thus the real burden of uncorrected refractive error is, in fact, much higher.”