The two-day event dedicated to the prevention of blindness, held in the capital of Emilia-Romagna on September 14 and 15, ended with great participation of the people of Bologna.
After the obligatory pause imposed by the pandemic, the tour of Italy for “Healthy Sight,” an initiative promoted by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness - IAPB Italia Onlus, has resumed. Dedicated to the prevention of diseases of the retina and the optical nerve, the “Healthy Sight” event (www.vistainsalute.it) is developed through a large mobile clinic - a hi-tech truck - equipped with several stations, within which a team of ophthalmologists and orthoptists perform free hi-tech screening of the retina and optical nerve, for people over 40.
“Sight is a precious gift, said Mario Barbuto, President of IAPB Italia Onlus, an enormous personal heritage that we inherit and that we must learn to protect from childhood. Neglecting it could expose us to great hardship and irreparably compromise our autonomy and independence.” This campaign was made possible thanks to the support of the Italian Parliament which, with the 2019 Budget Law, provided a three-year funding allocation, giving an impactful response to the tremendous need for visual prevention present in the population. “This campaign is finally a practical way to help people to gain awareness about the fundamental importance of prevention, explained the Hon. Paolo Russo speaking at the press conference. That this initiative has a high social value is also demonstrated by the fact that in the regions already involved in the campaign as many as 40 percent of the people examined have shown ongoing or suspected diseases, of which they had no awareness. Glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and maculopathies represent a set of pathologies that, together, affect more than 3 million Italians and 400 million people worldwide.
These numbers are expected to further increase because of the aging of the population and suggest a high-risk scenario with regard to the quality of life of Italians and the sustainability of health care spending. Dr. Manlio Nicoletti, Director of the Ophthalmology Department of the Maggiore Hospital in Bologna, underlined that information and prevention are a winning approach to fight retinal and optical nerve diseases: “Early diagnosis of optical and retinal diseases is critical so that visual loss does not become irreversible. Advances in medical research have led to the identification of effective therapies, particularly new injection therapies for retinal diseases, which have resulted in a reduction in legal blindness and visual impairment caused by these diseases, despite a progressive increase in their prevalence due to an aging population. Unfortunately, in most cases the lesions are detected late when there is already considerable vision loss in the affected eye. Hence the need for prevention campaigns.”
The campaign, which reached the Petronian City in October, has three fundamental objectives: raise awareness about the main eye diseases that cause blindness and low vision in the population; increase the level of priority for preventive eye care on regional health agendas; use the data collected to begin the establishment of a national database, aimed at learning about the impact of diseases and essential for the development of public health policies for the protection of eyesight. ‘The IAPB’s initiative complements other efforts implemented by the Emilia-Romagna Region, such as screening for amblyopia in the child population and eye screening projects for diabetic patients. The unquestionable merit of the “Healthy Sight” Campaign, said Raffaele Donini, Councillor for Health Policies of the Emilia-Romagna Region, is to move decisively in the direction of prevention, a fundamental approach that we not only share, but systematically adopt to prevent as much as possible the onset of certain diseases and deal with them quickly.’
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