The prevalence of blindness in India has come down by around 47 per cent since 2007, according to the National Blindness and Visually Impaired Survey (2019) released on Thursday, indicating that the country is close to achieving the WHO's goal of reducing it to 0.3 per cent of the total population by 2020.

However, the data reflects that reduction rate has surpassed the target of 25 set by the WHO. The WHO Global Action Plan for Universal Eye Health (2014-19) aims to reduce the prevalence of avoidable visual impairment by 25 per cent by 2019 from the baseline levels of 2010.

In absolute numbers, people suffering from blindness have reduced from 12 million in 2006-07 to 4.8 million in 2019. However, cataract still remains to be the most common cause of blindness (66.2 per cent) followed by corneal blindness (7.4 per cent). Besides this, the proportion of blindness due to complications of cataract surgery (7.2 per cent) has also increased, said the survey which was released by Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan.

"The prevalence of blindness in India has come down by around 47 per cent since the last survey conducted in 2006-2007 and the findings of the current survey are for blindness as defined to be vision of less than 3/60 in the better eye," Vardhan said adding the country is close to achieving the WHO's goal of reducing it to 0.3 per cent by 2020.

The current survey was conducted over a period between 2015 and 2018 by Dr Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences of the AIIMS in collaboration with the Union Health ministry, covering 93,000 people aged 50 years using Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness (RAAB) method in 31 districts of 24 states and Union Territories. The aim of the survey was to know the exact number of people who suffer from blindness and causes that lead to the condition.

India changed its over four-decade-old definition of blindness in 2017, bringing it in line with the WHO criteria.

According to the new definition, a person who is unable to count fingers from a distance of three metres would be considered "blind" as against the earlier stipulation of six metres, which was adopted in 1976.

The aim of revising the definition is also to be able to generate data which can be compared with global estimates and achieve the WHO goal of reducing the blindness prevalence in India to 0.3 per cent of the total population by 2020.

The previous survey was done in 2006-07, and showed blindness prevalence of about 1 per cent in country's population.

"Even though the definition of blindness was changed recently and we made use of the new definition to calculate the numbers, there is still a significant improvement in the numbers. If you look at the 50 plus population, 3.6 per cent people were found to be blind during the earlier survey and now the number has come down to 1.99 per cent," said principal investigator of  survey,  Dr Parveen Vashist, professor, RP Centre, AIIMS.