The price of sight

The price of sight: The global cost of eliminating avoidable blindness

April 2012: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), with the assistance of Three Rivers Consulting, was engaged by The Fred Hollows Foundation (FHF) and 5 other leading Eye Care NGOs to undertake an initial estimate of the global cost of eliminating avoidable blindness. PwC was then commissioned to quantify the benefits of eliminating avoidable blindness and vision impairment within a framework that incorporates economic, health and social benefits.

> Download The Price of Sight Report

> Download Benefits Framework

The need to eliminate avoidable blindness and vision impairment has been articulated in the Vision 2020: The Right to Sight, a programme that is global in its outlook and membership. However, until now there has not a a holistic understanding about the cost involved to achieve this goal, nor about the benefits resulting from its achievement.

Here, the cost and benefit story are brought together to estimate the impact of the Vision 2020: The Right to Sight goal; to globally eliminate avoidable blindness. Drawing together the cost and comparing it with the benefits received demonstrates the impact of the investment to eliminate avoidable blindness. This has been reported on a regional basis, helping us to understand where the highest cost and benefits are situated.

The price of sight report

The cost analysis was conducted to estimate the global cost of eliminating avoidable blindness, including the investment required to build ongoing primary and secondary health care systems, as well as the investment required to eliminate the ‘backlog’ of avoidable blindness. Global data was collected to compile separate costing frameworks for the primary and secondary care sectors, and the treatment of backlog. This costing exercise has provided a more comprehensive view of the costs of eliminating avoidable blindness. However, there is a need to improve data in this sector which will have positive flow-on effects for the eye health sector.

Benefits framework

Following the cost report, PwC was commissioned to develop a benefits framework to estimate the value of benefits from eliminating avoidable blindness and vision impairment. This framework incorporates economic, health and social benefits. The Benefits Framework developed by PwC focuses on the goals of Vision 2020: The Right to Sight, bringing together health and societal, as well as economic benefits.

It is important to distinguish between the approach of this analysis and those used in other studies which estimate the economic impact, or the cost of vision impairment, or specific eye diseases, or in a specific region. The analysis in in this benefits framework brings together global data with methodologies from literature and input from subject matter experts to compile the estimate of the value of benefits of eliminating avoidable blindness. This is the first time the health, economic and social benefits of eliminating avoidable blindness and vision impairment have been brought together on a global scale.

Key blindness statistics

Around 39 million people in the world are blind, 90% of whom live in the developing world.
80% of blindness cases are avoidable or treatable.
A further 246 million people are visually impaired to the point that their ability to function, to participate, to learn and to work is negatively impacted.
The majority of people living with blindness are women.
Most blind people need someone to care for them, and this is usually a child, more often than not a little girl, and that child often misses out on the chance of an education because of their responsibilities.

Tagged:

cataract