The look of age is the most common cause of visual disturbances. As the name suggests, it is usually due to aging.
Presbyopia affects almost everyone at a certain age. It typically starts around age 50says the Health Library.
People begin to notice that they have trouble reading the fine print on newspapers or medicine bottles.
The answer for most people is to get reading glasses. You can get reading glasses in Western countries for a few euros. Not only pharmacies, but also chemicals and kiosks.
The look of age of course also a problem in developing countries, where there is not always a way to improve impaired vision.
Many people living in developing countries can’t even get cheap reading glasses easily anywhere.
For many, this may mean the end of working.
This international group of healthcare workers, vision specialists and sociologists has in mind the distribution of reading glasses as part of developing countries Thrive projects 2017.
Group distributed hundreds of reading glasses to people living in villages in Bangladesh. They are basically magnifying glasses, although they come in different strengths.
In the past, it has been found in many studies that the increasing prevalence of presbyopia leads to problems.
Either the income of the family or the entire village community decreases. Many jobs require a close eye from the villagers.
People for example, find that they can no longer thread a needle when they should be sewing. Or equally, the elderly person can no longer pick or sort tea leaves.
With this in mind, the researchers went to 59 villages in Bangladesh. The eyesight of the people in the villages was studied. Among almost 11,000 adults, more than 800 adults were found to be affected by presbyopia.
Half of them got reading glasses right away, the other half got them eight months later.
Also the incomes of the villagers were ascertained. When the researchers returned to the villages months later, they found that the incomes of the village workers had increased by about 38 percent.
The income from the job increased from about $35 a month to $47.
Many people who had already stopped working were able to return to working life and helped support their immediate family.
The reading glasses given to the villagers cost an average of 3-4 dollars. Distributing reading glasses was therefore a very effective and cheap way to improve people’s quality of life, the researchers state.
Bangladesh has more than 60,000 villagesa third of all villages in the world.
The study was published by science journal Plos One. The announcement on the website said about it phys.org.