Latest Revision in Definition of Blindness

National Programmme for Control of Blindness (NPCB) has been re-designated recently as National Programme for Control of Blindness and Visual Impairment (NPCB&VI).

Further, the definition of blindness under the National Programme for Control of Blindness and Visual Impairment (NPCB&VI) has been modified in line with the definition used under the World Health Organization (WHO), i.e., ‘presenting distance visual acuity less than 3/60 (20/400) in the better eye or limitation of field of vision to be less than 10 degree from centre of fixation’.

The uniformity in the definition of blindness across various regions of the world is a pre-requisite for facilitating collection of population based data on prevalence of visual impairment in a uniform and comparable manner for estimating the global burden of blindness.