The UKNEHS team, lead by Professor Rupert Bourne, Professor Adrian Davies, and Raj Mehta, has coordinated efforts with Members of Parliament who want the government to take urgent action to address the lack of data about vision impairment, sight loss and eye diseases in the UK.
MP Marsha de Cordova, Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary, Lord Colin Low, Co-chair of the Eye Health and Visual Impairment All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), and Lord David Blunkett, Vice-chair of the Eye Health and Visual Impairment APPG, have written to The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Rt. Hon. Matt Hancock to raise their serious concerns about the lack of UK data on this important area of health and wellbeing.
You can read their letter, and the press release below. If you believe that the UK needs quality data about eye health, visual impairment, and hearing and sight loss, please sign up to the UKNEHS website to follow updates and learn how you can support the campaign. Without these data, we can't plan the eye health and hearing services we need to prevent people losing their sight, or understand who needs services to support them with the impairments to vision and hearing that they are living with now.
We need a UK National Eye-health and Hearing Study urgently, so we can address the unmet needs of people living with hearing and sight loss urgently. Sensory loss is known to affect the risks of developing dementia, and is linked to increased risks of depression, isolation and suicide.
Follow Marsha de Cordova's twitter feed on this topic: https://twitter.com/MarshadeCordova/status/1314133355219296259?s=19