by Massimo May
The cycle that links poverty to disability, including visual impairment, is now a reality in Italy as well
The data speak for themselves. According to Istat, one resident in Italy out of 10 lives in conditions of absolute poverty. Numbers confirmed by the recent report on poverty by Caritas Italiana. This means that almost 6 million people are in a state of serious fragility. According to Luciano Manicardi, a monk of Bose: Fragility is a constitutive dimension of the human being. Dimension that questions and asks for answers. Fragility is not the problem, but the answers that can be given to it. It is therefore clear that we are living in a time of crisis that involves many dimensions of our humanity and becomes a challenge for man but also for the institutions and organizations that are made up of and of men.
The cycle that links poverty to disability, evident above all in countries in the southern hemisphere, also occurs in Italy: if you are poor, unfortunately, you are more likely to encounter the condition of disability. And among the disabilities there is the visual one. Especially in recent years in Italy the phenomenon appears worrying: more and more people cannot afford a pair of glasses or, even worse, they give up on eye care and prevention services to keep costs down. So then campaigns such as that of Cbm (Christian Blind Mission) Italy and the Association of Eye Disease Patients Out of the Shadows. For the right to see and be seen tries to answer the many questions that come to us from an increasingly vast, pervasive and demanding fragility.
Because the right to sight must be everyone’s right. Yet we know from the World Vision Report drawn up in 2019 by the WHO that in the world 1 in 2 people with vision problems do not have the possibility to access eye services. There are over 1 billion people concentrated mainly in developing countries. And even more: by 2050 this figure will rise to 1.8 billion – according to the estimate of the World Report on Vision WHO and the Lancet Global Health Commission – due to population aging and changing lifestyles.
Therefore, impressive data mitigated by a sign of hope: in 90 percent of cases, visual impairment can be prevented and treated. Concrete answers need to be given, such as free eye examination services for the most needy and fragile people. Cbm, for example, has launched a pilot project in Milan, creating a significant social impact. This is why it was decided to replicate it in other cities, because as Pope Francis says: one can get out of crises, one must get out. But under two conditions. One that you can’t get out of on your own. Either we go out together or we can’t go out. And, on the other hand, one emerges from a crisis to improve, always to move forward, to progress.
July 23, 2023 (change July 23, 2023 | 11:57 am)
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