visual sciences have been progressing quickly in recent decades through globalization phenomenon. an enormous change has taken place in ocular health issues, however, there are various problems facing ophthalmic public health worldwide. in the previous years, the world health organization and the international agency for the prevention of blindness in partnership launched the global initiative ...

We need good quality information to be able to carry out our eye care programmes in support of VISION 2020, to measure (and improve) our performance, and to advocate for the resources and support we need to succeed. Much of this information can be collected, analysed, and used as part of our daily work, as many of the articles in this issue show. However, many of our questions can only be answe...

A vision of photonic network in 2020 is presented, which envisages “smart photonic cloud” in the Big Data era. The smart photonic cloud is referred to as an atmosphere which serves as a universal infrastructure, providing with connectivities to machine-to-machine communications such as networked high-performance computing and intraand inter data center networks. To cope with strong demands for ...

FOREWORD Every country needs a vision statement which stirs the imagination and motivates all segments of society to greater effort. It is an essential step in building a political consensus on a broad national development strategy, which encompasses, inter-alia, the roles and responsibilities of different agents in the economy, such as Central, State and local government, the private corporate...

VISION 2020: The Right to Sight has provided a vision and a common goal for eye care programmes. It has provided the paradigm shift, or change in the way of thinking, from individual patient care to population care, a shift from each person doing a job or task, to a group working to eliminate avoidable blindness. Such a common goal needs a team approach. The VISION 2020 approach proposes that a...

Smoking Bans Yield Long-Term Benefits When it comes to linking cigarette smoke to heart attacks, one might assume that such a link would apply only as long as one is smoking or being exposed to secondhand smoke. That’s not necessarily true, however, at least according to a follow-up study of people living in and around Pueblo, Colorado. In the 2 January 2009 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Wee...

BACKGROUND VISION 2020 is a global initiative launched in 1999 to eliminate avoidable blindness by 2020. The objective of this study was to undertake a situation analysis of the Zambian eye health system and assess VISION 2020 process indicators on human resources, equipment and infrastructure. METHODS All eye health care providers were surveyed to determine location, financing sources, human...

Stillbirth is a common adverse pregnancy outcome, with nearly 3 million third-trimester stillbirths occurring worldwide each year. 98% occur in low-income and middle-income countries, and more than 1 million stillbirths occur in the intrapartum period, despite many being preventable. Nevertheless, stillbirth is practically unrecognised as a public health issue and few data are reported. In this...