Dear Readers, On Saturday March 3rd, 2012, a great figure of modern Optometry, Prof Irvin Borish, passed away at the age of 99. Most Optometry students in English and Spanish languages around the world have studied his books on "Clinical Refraction" over the last 60 years. Prof I. Borish conducted several double blind studies to help establish PAL lenses in USA as the most efficient alternative to bifocals. He will be remembered as the "Father of Optometry" for thousands of eyecare professionals world wide.

It was with great sadness that we learned at the beginning of the year of the death of the founder of Points de Vue magazine, Mr Jacques Mur, well liked and well known to some of you. 

This issue features Vision in Children, a topic chosen because a child's good vision helps with his development and learning of life skills. It is generally held that over 80% of the information we receive, involves our vision. 

Everyone, or almost everyone, agrees that if vision problems in babies and very young children are detected very early on, and addressed, most can be treated and will not constitute any handicap in the child's future development.

It is alarming to observe that in 2012 over a billion people could quite simply live better lives if they had spectacles to wear. Of course not all visual problems can be resolved by wearing glasses, but this is a considerable failing and one that it should be possible to overcome. The aim of Vision 20/20 is to achieve the objective of "Good vision for all…" by the year 2020.

All the goodwill and all the NGOs in the world will not be able to deal with this problem on their own. It is with the governments in each country that lobbying must be increased.

Each one of us can do our bit. That is the aim of this message. Awareness has been aroused, calls have been made to the various international congresses, such as in Durban, for example (World Congress on Refractive Error, 2010). If we want to achieve this noble objective by 2020 we must now accelerate our action with regard to public authorities.

We have asked specialists from the world over to focus on the scale of the problems without claiming to have covered every aspect of child vision:

Jean-Michel Rozet and Josseline Kaplan on genetic pathologies, François Vital-Durand on screening babies, Natario L. Couser, Scott R. Lambert on childhood cataracts, Claude Speeg-Schatz on the treatment of esotropia using botulinum toxin, Ann L. Weber on the reduction of amblyopia in so-called "developed" countries.

Trine Langaas and Patricia Riddell indicate a means by which to detect the early signs of myopia, Sumrana Yasmin relates her experiences in terms of efforts made in developing countries, read on www. pointsdevue.com, and Laurent Laloum writes on improving the vision of children with amblyopia. Katrina Schmid addresses the development of myopia after puberty, P.C Wu writes about the increasing scale of myopia in children in Taiwan, Alexandre Asseraf focuses on sun protection for children and Hervé Cordier introduces the Essilor OptifogTM, anti-mist solution. In our History section Michel Alexandre covers a relatively unknown subject "Musicians and their vision problems".

EDITORIAL N°66 by Marc ALEXANDRE

Medical scientific file

Product

History