At the beginning of this year, the National Health Commission issued the national eye health plan for the 14th five year plan (2021-2025), which proposed to pay attention to two key groups of children, adolescents and the elderly, focus on key eye diseases such as myopia, ametropia, cataract, fundus disease, glaucoma and corneal blindness, promote appropriate technologies and diagnosis and treatment models for eye disease prevention and treatment, and improve the eye health level of key groups.
During the 13th Five Year Plan period, China's ophthalmic medical and health undertakings developed rapidly. Ophthalmic service capacity continued to improve, and cataract surgery was widely carried out in the county. The team of ophthalmic medical personnel has been continuously improved, and the number of ophthalmologists has increased to 47000. The people's awareness of loving and protecting eyes has been significantly improved. However, China is still one of the countries with the largest number of patients with blindness and visual impairment in the world. The main blinding eye disease in China has been transformed from infectious ophthalmopathy to cataract, myopic retinopathy, glaucoma, keratopathy, diabetic retinopathy and so on. With the economic and social development and the aging population, the people have a higher demand for eye health. The total amount of high-quality ophthalmic medical resources in China is relatively insufficient and the distribution is uneven. The grass-roots eye health service capacity still needs to be strengthened, and the task of eye health is still arduous. The plan proposes that at the end of the 14th five year plan, the total number of ophthalmologists will exceed 50000, and the number of ophthalmologists per 100000 population will exceed 3.6. This is of great practical significance to promote the high-quality development of China's eye health cause and improve the people's eye health level.
Research shows that uncorrected ametropia and cataract are the top two blinding eye diseases in China. Children, adolescents and the elderly are the most vulnerable to these two eye diseases in the whole age group. During the 14th Five Year Plan period, China's eye health work focused on these two groups of people, which is of great significance to improve the level of eye disease prevention and treatment in China. Effective refractive error correction coverage and effective cataract surgery coverage can not only reflect the accessibility of cataract surgery and refractive correction services in a certain population, but also reflect the quality of eye health services. Incorporating these two indicators into the eye health service evaluation system will help patients "see clearly" on the premise of "seeing", so as to improve the eye health level of key populations.
The plan puts forward that we should focus on prevention and combine prevention and control. Pay attention to the intervention of factors in the early stage of eye diseases, pay attention to the coordination of medical and prevention, and divide the treatment of acute and slow diseases, so as to promote the development of eye health from focusing on treatment to focusing on people's health. For example, 0-6 years old is the key period for the development of children's eye structure and visual function. The visual development before the age of 6 affects the visual quality of children throughout their life. Therefore, early monitoring, early detection, early warning and early intervention are very important. To carry out eye care and vision examination for children aged 0-6 and establish vision files, we need to give full play to the role of grass-roots medical and health institutions, strengthen cooperation with maternal and child health institutions, and build a child eye care service network with clear division of labor, different emphases and close cooperation. At present, some places build cloud refractive archives based on the Internet and actively build a benign prevention and treatment system with multi-party linkage of schools, communities, medical institutions and families, which is worthy of further improvement and promotion.
Eye health is a major public health and social problem related to people's livelihood. We should adhere to the starting point of meeting the people's multi-level and diversified eye health needs, implement the strategic deployment of healthy China, further build a high-quality and efficient eye health service system, and strive to provide people with eye health services covering the whole life cycle. It is hoped that all localities and departments will strengthen the publicity and education of eye health science, strengthen the awareness that everyone is the first person responsible for their own eye health, and promote the formation of an atmosphere of everyone's participation, responsibility and sharing, so that everyone can have a pair of bright eyes.