The use of Glycerol-Preserved Corneas in the Developing world

The World Health Organization defines blindness as visual acuity worse than 3/60.¹ Using this definition, there were an estimated 45 million people bilaterally blind in 2001 and another 180 million people with bilateral severe visual impairment.² Globally, corneal opacity is the third leading cause of bilateral blindness after cataract and glaucoma, affecting some 7-9 million people, 90% of which live in the developing world.² Furthermore, corneal blindness is often monocular, generating associated disability, which these statistics do not reflect. Corneal causes of blindness encompass a large number of disease processes, including, but not limited to, infectious inflammatory, traumatic and genetic causes. Of these, trachoma is the most common in the developing world.