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Vision 2020

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for highlighting one of the most urgent priorities in development assistance. It is not often mentioned in Parliament. I still remember the relief felt by aid agencies when onchocerciasis in Africa was all but conquered. Surgery and medicine have made many advances, and there have been victories along the way; but the combination of disability and poverty described by the Indian novelist Rohinton Mistry is almost unimaginable for us. I am most grateful to Vision 2020 for its briefing, which helped me to see the facts more clearly. For example, as much 75 per cent of blindness is avoidable. I had not realised that cataracts are by far the most common cause of blindness. I knew that successful operations take place daily to tackle the 15 million or so cases worldwide every year. In the poorest countries, the operations do wonders for the beneficiaries. A survey in Madurai, for example, found that 85 per cent of males and 58 per cent of females who had lost their jobs as a result of blindness got them back again. The underlying case of blindness is poverty. It is estimated that children born in the world’s poorest regions are four times more likely to suffer from blindness than those born in higher-income countries. Conditions associated with childhood blindness, such as measles, rubella and vitamin A deficiency, are also causes of child mortality, and they are preventable. It is a sad fact that nine out of 10 visually impaired children in the poorerest countries are deprived of education, with the consequent loss to their local economies. Many charities are combating blindness, and some smaller ones achieve huge results. The Fred Hollows Foundation has reached thousands in Nepal. One agency for which I have great respect is Sightsavers. I will give an example of its work last year in India. Its local partners treated more than 1.9 million people for sight-related problems. They performed 115,000 cataract operations and provided rehabilitation training for more than 3,000 people with irreversible blindness or low vision. Rehabilitation is an essential part of the agency’s work. One agency related to them, Jana Jagarana in Orissa, tells of a boy called Ravi Nayak who asked his carer, "Aren’t you going to be helping me any more?" She was in difficulty, but replied firmly, "Since you are capable of doing things on your own, I should spend more time with those who need me". She gradually reduced her visits to him, but the agency has since helped Ravi with capital to start a cycle repair shop, and offered to send him for vocational training. He is apparently now happy and planning his future. I end with a short song from a Vietnamese girl in Saigon known to Save the Children whose mother was poisoned by Agent Orange. I will never forget her story, which I have no time to recount now. She sang: "I dream of seeing the colour of the trees Of seeing the home where I might live Of seeing the mountain with its waterfall I dream of seeing my mother’s smile"