Eye Health Aotearoa letter to the Minister of Health
Macular Degeneration is a member of the Eye Health Collation which is working towards affordable and equitable eye health for all New Zealanders. One of the first steps towards achieving this is to understand the eye health of New Zealanders, which we are currently lacking information on.
EHA has written an open letter to the Minister of Health, and we are asking you to join us in signing the petition for the first ever National Eye Health Survey in New Zealand.
Please click on this link to the petition https://www.eyehealthaotearoa.org.nz/open_letter_minister_of_health or open the link through the QR code to sign the petition.
To access the link through this QR code, please open your smart phone camera and pretend you are going to take a photo, it will then ask you if you wish to access the petition website page.
Open letter to the Minister
Kia ora Minister
Vision loss can have a devastating impact on people’s lives. Not only those experiencing vision loss, but those who love and care about them. Right now, we don’t even know the scale of the problem. We call on you to show leadership by making eye health count in the next parliamentary term.
People with vision loss are:
far less likely to be employed
three times as likely to experience clinical depression
twice as likely to fall and four times as likely to suffer hip fractures
Currently New Zealand has no formal data on the prevalence or causation of vision loss and no comprehensive eye health strategies, policies or frameworks to plan for and measure progress in eye health and vision care.
The first step in correcting this is to get truly representative and current New Zealand population-based data on the prevalence and causes of vision impairment.
Supporters of Eye Health Aotearoa call on the Government to fund the first ever National Eye Health Survey in New Zealand, to inform future planning and funding decisions.
We urge you to take a fresh look at eye health in Aotearoa New Zealand as the first step in closing the eye health and vision loss gap.
Nga mihi
