Is mór agam an deis seo a thapú labhairt ar cheist atá tar éis teacht faoi mo bhráid le cúpla mí anuas. Baineann sé le cúrsaí súile. Issues and concerns that have been raised with me by constituents about our eye care model in Ireland. We know, for example, that public eye care services are under significant pressure. National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, data shows that over 42,000 people are waiting for eye care appointments, with approximately 33% of those waiting longer than one year.
While much attention is rightly focused on that side of the thing, what I want to talk about today relates to our community eye care model and whether it is equipped to identify and manage emerging eye health challenges, particularly among children and young people. The current paediatric eye care pathway is focused on early childhood screening and the identification of serious visual impairments, but I do not think this captures the changing nature of eye health among children and adolescents, particularly when we take account of the rapid rise in the incidents of myopia, or short-sightedness.
We know myopia typically develops between the ages of eight and 16, after school entry vision screening has taken place. This raises the question as to whether some children are developing vision problems without any structured follow-up or monitoring and, in fact, in many cases a diagnosis is reactive because a child will complain, for example, that they cannot see the blackboard or cannot engage properly with a lesson. By that stage, there would have been some lag in academic outcomes and the vision problem would have presented itself.
Emerging evidence from Ireland and abroad would suggest that myopia is becoming increasingly common, particularly in younger age groups, with clinic based data showing the highest rate of myopia now among people in their 20s. While long-sightedness remains more prevalent in clinical populations, adjusted population estimates indicate that myopia is now becoming more prevalent as an eye condition, which shows the changing nature of eye health.
We know that undetected vision problems can negatively affect educational attainment, classroom participation, confidence and social development. Also, myopia is associated with a lifelong increase in serious eye disease like retinal detachment, glaucoma or cataracts. This risk of myopia and the severity of it increases with age and we know that high myopia is much more associated with a high risk of vision loss compared with normal vision. This has significant public health implications. Individuals with high myopia face the greatest risk. The overall burden on services is likely driven by the growing number of people with moderate myopia as well. We estimate that 50% of the global population could be myopic by 2050.
This is something we need to be very aware of in terms of how we design our eye care model and whether we should have proactive monitoring in place. One immediate action we could take is to encourage and enable independent prescription of medicines for eye conditions by optometrists in Ireland, which is something that is not in place at the moment. International evidence would suggest that allowing those prescribing powers to be made available to optometrists can allow more patients to be treated safely in the community. This reduces unnecessary hospital referrals and eases pressures on ophthalmology services. Large-scale clinical data from a number of studies suggests that electronic medical records can enable this as a potential cost effective tool for monitoring trends in eye health.
Will the Minister of State give us a view on the current model of the eye care pathway, especially at a paediatric level? Given our educational system is becoming more reliant on screens and we know there is greater use of screens, that in itself is compounding the issues affecting myopia and increasing its prevalence, as evidenced by the data. Ultimately, can we build an early warning or early detection system into our paediatric eye care pathway?
