The Centre for Vision in the Developing World believes everyone, no matter where they are in the world, should be able to see. Over a billion people, according to the World Health Organization, would benefit from glasses but do not have access to them. But this is not an unsolvable problem. In this short series of slides, we'll introduce the problem, a solution, and ourselves.

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If you wear glasses or contact lenses, you know that being able to see clearly is a vital part of our everyday existence. It affects our education, our work, our daily life and our health. Without clear sight, you could have struggled at school, been unable to do your job. Do you think you would have been as successful without clear vision? What would you do if you were denied access to them?

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World Health Organization research indicates that over 1.3 billion people would see an improvement if they had access to glasses, but currently lack access to them. Our estimates indicate that this could be even higher.

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So what causes this? Although in many parts of the developing world physical access to the glasses is expensive and rare, this is a solvable problem. Glasses can be made inexpensively and plentifully, and are already being supplied like this worldwide.

The major problem to overcome is a lack of personnel to fit them. Highly trained optometrists are very rare in many parts of the developing world, and often leave to work in countries where their skills will bring them better pay.

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Here are some example statistics to illustrate the problem. In the UK (where we're based), there is an average of around 1 optometrist for every 10,000 people. This is fairly typical for the developed world.

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But here's a typical optometrist in sub-Saharan Africa - there's only 1 of them for every 1 million people! Not only does this optometrist have to serve 100 times more people, they have to do it with far fewer resources, poorer infrastructure, less government assistance and a much poorer and less educated patient base.

Clearly, the developed world model of eyecare isn’t working in the developing world. So are there any solutions?

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A potential solution is to simply do away with most of the need for optometrists. Why not create a pair of glasses that the user can simply tune to their own eyes - stopping when they can see most clearly? It turns out that, as long as you can build an affordable pair of glasses with adjustable lenses, users can set their own vision, remarkably accurately! This process is known as self-refraction, and is one of our main research topics here at the Centre.

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Invented by Professor Josh Silver, the Adspecs are the first (and currently only) available self-adjustable glasses that allow the user to tune their glasses to their eyes. To change the power of the lens, the user turns the wheels on the syringes on the arms to pump more or less silicone oil into the lenses (which are simply two flexible membranes, protected by a hard plastic layer), changing their shape. When done, the user simply tightens the screws on each side of the frame and cuts off the syringes and tubing - transforming the Adspecs into a normal pair of glasses in a few minutes!

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So far, over 30,000 Adspecs have been deployed worldwide through various programmes, most notably the US Humanitarian and Civic Assistance Program of the US Military's EUCOM. Others have been deployed through research studies, other humanitarian organisations and 10,000 through the adult education programme of the Ghanaian government, NFED.

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Professor Silver and the Centre have an ambitious vision for the future - one billion people to get the glasses they need but lack access to by 2020.

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To really tackle this problem, we need to get to the stage where the cost of the pair of glasses is not prohibitive to the more than 1 billion people living on less than a dollar a day. To do this many things must happen, but the key is investment and engineering on a truly flexible, innovative low-cost design for self-adjustable glasses made for the developing world. But that’s only the start of the challenges.

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This slide contains just some of the issues that we’ve encountered and are going to encounter in our work. To give some examples - the fitting protocol: How do you tell people how to adjust the glasses for the best results if they can’t read and you don’t speak their language? or what about government interest: How do you get a local government to see that this is a problem worth solving when they don’t even have running water to most of their citizens?

And this is where the Centre comes in - we want to do the research that allows glasses to get to those who need them, effectively and safely. Research is the key.

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And that's the 2 Minute Introduction to the problem, a solution and our work. Why not explore further?

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