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Glaucoma: 30 years on

Back in 1993, the late and great Barry Cullen FRCS (Cavan born, Dublin trained), the first editor of Eye News, asked me to write an article about the current treatment of chronic open angle glaucoma (COAG). At the time I...

Building Capacity for Children’s Eye Care in Africa: the VISION 2020 LINKS Programme

This article follows the Correspondent News articles in the previous five print issues of Eye News [1-5] on the VISION 2020 LINKS Programme [6]. This article describes how African and UK eye care teams are working together to tackle childhood...

IN FOCUS - VISION 2020 LINKS Programme: the contribution of health partnerships to reduction in blindness worldwide

As other articles in this series (IN FOCUS Apr 2020) demonstrate, the year 2020 is highly significant in the eye care field. Naming a global initiative ‘VISION 2020: The Right to Sight’ in 1999 was a daring way to focus...

VISION 2020 LINKS Programme and DR-NET World Sight Day Workshop

World Sight Day (WSD) was celebrated globally on 8 October 2020 [1]. From Australia and the Pacific to the Americas, via Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, awareness-raising and advocacy activities took place throughout the day, to focus attention on unnecessary...

The International Centre for Eye Health: weaving the global threads together

The VISION 2020 LINKS & Networks Programme has been writing regular articles in Eye News about its capacity-strengthening activities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) for more than a decade. This, the first International Issue, is a landmark for Eye...

The bionic eye – behind the headlines

Multiple visual prosthetic projects and other vision regeneration initiatives being tested in preclinical and clinical development worldwide illustrate continuing progress and opportunities in addressing profound blindness from hereditary retinal diseases and other causes (Table 1). Three implantable bionic vision systems...

Ophthalmology in ancient india, Sushruta’s time and the modern era

While reading an article related to the history of Indian ophthalmology, I came across this description of a surgical procedure: “The doctor warmed the patient’s eye with the breath of his mouth. He rubbed the closed eye of the patient...

Developments in oculoplastic surgery

A study of NHS practice demonstrated significant patient-reported quality-of-life improvements from commonly performed oculoplastic operations: entropion repair, ectropion repair, ptosis repair and dacrocystorhinostomy (DCR) [1]. In recent years, surgical and non-surgical approaches to functional and aesthetic oculoplastic surgery have advanced...

Guide to Gaining Approval for a Clinical Study

This article focuses on gaining approval for clinical research involving NHS patients, although the principles can be applied to other types of research. The intention is to give an overview of the requirements for setting up a research study, but...

Rare eye diseases: progress continues with authorised orphan medicines and breakthrough technologies

An update on the development of orphan medicines, recent regulatory treatment approvals for rare eye conditions and advances in retinal prosthetic technologies for blinding diseases. The prevalence of a rare disease is based usually on a range of estimates and...

An introduction to research governance

Research is the process of acquiring new generalisable knowledge and should be fully integrated into health care work. There is a growing drive to encourage and further develop evidence-based practice in ophthalmology so that staff and patients benefit from improved...