Optical services through outreach in South India: a case study from Aravind Eye Hospitals

The need to correct refractive errors Refractive errors are a priority within the global initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindness, VISION 2020: The Right to Sight.1,4 Until recently, refractive errors never figured as a cause of vision impairment or blindness in the surveys; this was probably due to WHO’s categorisation of visual acuity as based on best corrected vision, presumably because of the ease (from a technical perspective) with which it can be addressed. Thus refractive errors had not grabbed the attention of policymakers and service providers.