Myopia: Epidemiology and Strategies for Intervention

At the turn of this twenty-first century, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a global initiative to eliminate the avoidable causes of blindness known as Vision 2020: The Right to Sight. Refractive errors were one of the five priorities selected based on its substantial worldwide burden of disease. From 1990 until 2010, it was estimated that uncorrected refractive error was the second leading cause of blindness [1]. Myopia is one of the most common causes of correctable visual impairment in the developed world and leading cause of preventable blindness in the developing world.