News of the ICO, Ophthalmology and Vision:

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International ophthalmology news headlines:

• First Congress of Afghanistan Eye Doctors Society
  
  
• PAACO Becomes MEACO - the Middle-East African Council of Ophthalmology
  
  
• Nigerian Society to raise funds for residency resource centers
  
  
• ICOFoundation Board Adds Hilel Lewis, Paul Lichter and James Mazzo
  
  
• WHO endorses ICO Research Agenda for Blindness Prevention
  
  
• WHO recommends standards for definition of vision loss
  
  
• Visual functioning and quality of life stressed in WHO report
  
  
• IFOS/ICO Fellowships added in Austria, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa, Switzerland and US
  
  
• ICO Basic and Clinical Assessments offered in April
  
  
• Support for training ophthalmologists in Nigeria
  
  
• New ICO Clinical Guideline on Leprosy
  
  
• WHO reports progress on reducing blindness
  
  
• New data on visual impairment

(Also see:

• The Latest News
• Other News.
• the latest issue of the ICO Leader Letter.)

First Congress of Afghanistan Eye Doctors Society

The new Afghanistan Eye Doctors Society held their first Congress on March 10, 2005 in Kabul.

Afghani Minister of Health Dr. Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatimi spoke at the Congress, and 59 of the 80 ophthalmologists in Afghanistan participated.

The Congress approved the constitution of the Society and elected the leadership for one year, including President Dr. M. Alem Qaher. Dr. A. Zia Aamoon will be responsible for international relations.

The Society's new leadership committee defined improvement of training programs as their top priority. The Society is applying for membership in the International Federation of Ophthalmological Societies (IFOS), for which the ICO is the executive body.

PAACO Becomes MEACO - the Middle-East African Council of Ophthalmology

At the VIII International Congress of the Pan Arab African Council of Ophthalmology (PAACO), April 7 - 10, 2005 in Dubai, PAACO welcomed Iran as a member and changed its name to the Middle-East African Council of Ophthalmology (MEACO). The name change was made to reflect the composition and nature of the Council more accurately.

Nigerian Society to raise funds for residency resource centers

The Ophthalmologic Society of Nigeria (OSN) has pledged to raise the $US 36,000 needed to pay for the first year of support for six new regional resource centers for ophthalmology residency training in Nigeria.

With $50,000 contributed by the ICO and $70,000 from the ICOFoundation (including $20,000 donated by Council Member Akef El Magraby, MD), the World Health Organization is purchasing the needed computers and services to provide broadband Internet connections for the six resource centers. The OSN will pay the monthly costs.

The resource centers are one of a number of initiatives for enhancing residency training for ophthalmologists in Nigeria that evolved from an ICO tour of residency programs and meetings with the OSN and the Minister of Health a year ago.

"Thanks to the OSN and all those involved for their commitment," said ICO Secretary-General Bruce Spivey, MD. "We hope that this pilot project in one country will provide a model and inspiration for initiatives to enhance residency training elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa and around the world."

ICOFoundation Board Adds Hilel Lewis, Paul Lichter and James Mazzo

The International Council of Ophthalmology Foundation (ICOFoundation) has added Hilel Lewis, MD; Paul Lichter, MD; and James Mazzo to its Board of Directors.

Dr. Lewis is Professor and Chairman of the Division of Ophthalmology and Director of the Cole Eye Institute at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

Dr. Lichter is Professor and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences and Director of the W. K. Kellogg Eye Center at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.

Mr. Mazzo is President and Chief Executive Officer of Advanced Medical Optics, Inc. in Santa Ana, California, USA.

Other members of the ICOFoundation Board are:

• Bradley R. Straatsma, MD, JD, President (Los Angeles, California, USA)
• Gottfried Naumann, MD, Vice President (Erlangen, Germany)
• Bruce Spivey, MD, Secretary-Treasurer (San Francisco, California, USA)
• Rubens Belfort, MD, PhD (São Paulo, Brazil)
• Neil Levine (New York, New York, USA)
• Akef El Maghraby, MD (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia)
• David Pyott (Irvine, California, USA)
• Timothy Sear (Fort Worth, Texas, USA)
• Paul Sieving, MD, PhD (Bethesda, Maryland, USA)
• Alfred Sommer, MD (Baltimore, Maryland, USA)
• Yasuo Tano, MD (Osaka, Japan)

The ICOFoundation was formed in 2002 to seek financial support for ICO initiatives to preserve and restore vision through education, quality eye care and research. For more information, see the ICOFoundation Web site.

ICO Symposium on Managing Cataract Blindness at the Asia Pacific Congress

There was a great turnout for the ICO's symposium on "Innovations in Managing Cataract Blindness Worldwide" on March 29th during the 20th Congress of the Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology, March 27 - 31, 2005 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The symposium featured speakers from different parts of Asia reporting on medical, technological, operational, and manpower innovations in managing cataract blindness.

WHO endorses ICO Research Agenda for Blindness Prevention

The World Health Organization (WHO) has formally endorsed the International Council of Ophthalmology's Research Agenda for Global Blindness Prevention.

Formal acceptance was recommend by participants in a WHO consultation on research priorities in Geneva in September 2003.

WHO has recently issued a report on "Opportunities in Global Eye Research," which can be downloaded as a PDF file (168 KB) from the ICO Web site. To read or print it, you will need Adobe Reader, which is a free download.

Among the recommendations in the report:

• To endorse all the themes of the ICO research agenda, including important or emerging conditions in developing countries, such as refractive error and diabetes-related eye disease.
  
  
• To conduct continuing epidemiological and operations research to refine estimates of the prevalence and causes of visual impairment and blindness.

WHO recommends standards for definition of vision loss and visual functioning

The World Health Organization (WHO) has also issued a report that recommends a modification of the categorization of visual impairment and codes for blindness and low vision to be incorporated into the International Classification of Diseases and used for reporting internationally.

The report on "Development of Standards for Characterization of Vision Loss And Visual Functioning" is based on a WHO consultation in September 2003.

Among the participants was International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO) Standards Committee Member August Colenbrander, MD, who prepared the ICO's 2002 resolution on "Visual Standards - Aspects and Ranges of Vision Loss."

In line with the ICO report and with the finding that the most common cause that of vision loss is undercorrected refractive error, WHO recommends reporting vision loss based on the presenting, binocular acuity (a measure of how the person functions), rather than on the best-corrected acuity of the better eye (a measure of how the eyes function).

You can download the WHO report at: whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2003/WHO_PBL_03.91.pdf (80 KB).

Visual functioning and quality of life emphasized in WHO report

The WHO report on "Development of Standards for Characterization of Vision Loss And Visual Functioning" also recommends greater focus on development of cross-cultural methods for assessing visual functioning and vision-related quality of life, particularly patient-reported assessments.

The participants suggested that a new Visual Functioning Questionnaire with 20 questions, VFQ-20, which is included in the report, be tested and validated for international use.

IFOS/ICO Fellowships added in Austria, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa, Switzerland and US

Additional IFOS/ICO Fellowships are now being offered to young ophthalmologists from developing countries by:

• Dr. Stefan Harrer in Vienna, Austria
  
  
• Klinik und Poliklinik für Augenheilkunde in Bern, Switzerland
  
  
• UniversitätsSpital Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland
  
  
• University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa
  
  
• Miguel N. Burnier, Jr., MD, PhD, FRCSC, in Montreal, Canada
  
  
• University of Regensburg in Germany
  
  
• Jorge Velazco Quiroga, MD in Lima, Peru
  
  
• University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany
  
  
• Project Drishti in Bangalore, India
  
  
• Lotus Eye Care Hospital in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India
  
  
• Wilmer Eye Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  
  
• Pakistan Institute of Community Ophthalmology in Peshawar, Pakistan
  
  
• Vista Klinik in Binningen, Switzerland
  
  
• Augenzentrum - Klinik Pallas in Olten, Switzerland
  
  
• Al Salama Eye Hospital in Kerala, India
  
  
• University of Udine in Udine, Italy.

Now available from more than 60 ophthalmology departments and programs in 27 countries, the IFOS/ICO Fellowships generally last three months. Fellows are expected to bring the acquired knowledge and skills back to their country of origin and take part in programs to preserve and restore vision in their country.

April 30 and October 31 are the deadlines to apply for each round of Fellowships.

For more information, see www.icoph.org/fellow or contact ICO Fellowship Director and Treasurer Balder Gloor, MD at mailto:b.gloor@access.unizh.ch.

ICO Basic and Clinical Assessments offered in early April

The International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO) Basic and Clinical Assessments are offered early each April at locations around the world.

The deadline to apply to take the Assessments is January 31 each year.

The International Basic Science Assessment for Ophthalmologists is offered in English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish and Spanish. The International Clinical Sciences Assessment is only in English at this point.

Nearly 12,000 candidates have taken ICO Basic and Clinical Assessments since its inception. In 2006, about 1540 candidates took the Assessments at 92 test centers in 61 countries.

Support for Training Ophthalmologists in Nigeria

Professor Eyitayo Lambo, the Honorable Minister of Health of Nigeria, has formally approved and supported plans for enhancing residency training for ophthalmologists in Nigeria that evolved from an ICO visit March 29 to April 5, 2004.

Council Member Adenike Abiose, MD, and Dr. B.G.K. Ajayi, President of the Ophthalmological Society of Nigeria (OSN), organized the tour of residency programs and meetings with the OSN and the Minister of Health. Participating were ICO Officers Fritz Naumann, MD, Balder Gloor, MD, and Bruce Spivey, MD, and Council Members Daniel Etya'ale, MD, Hannah Faal, MD, and Akef El Maghraby, MD.

There is significant progress on follow-up, including:

• The Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology has shipped 19 sets of the Academy's Basic and Clinical Science Course to Nigeria for use in residency programs.
  
  
• With financial support provided by the ICO and ICO Foundation, Council member Daniel Etya'ale, MD, of the World Health Organization, has purchased the needed computers and services to provide broadband Internet connections at five new Resource Centers.
  
  
• The OSN has created an OSN Electronic Update & Newsletter to encourage residents and members to use the Web for continuing medical education.

And there is a lot more planned.

WHO reports progress on reducing blindness

Efforts to reduce blindness throughout the world are paying off, World Health Organization (WHO) Representative and Advisory Committee member Ramachandra Pararajasegaram, MD, told the International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO) when it met in 2004 in New Orleans.

Dr. Pararajasegaram said new data show that the long-term trend in the number of people in the world who are blind has been reversed: the total number of blind or visually impaired people has started to decrease.

New data on visual impairment

The data have since been published in the Bulletin of the WHO: in 2002, there were more than 161 million people worldwide with visual impairment, of whom about 37 million were blind.

Cataract remains the leading cause of visual impairment in the world, but glaucoma has moved up from the third to second leading cause, followed by age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and trachoma.

The complete WHO report can be downloaded at: http://www.who.int/entity/bulletin/volumes/82/11/en/844.pdf.

Next: Other News of the ICO, ophthalmology and vision

(Also see:

• The Latest News
• the latest issue of the ICO Leader Letter.)