KARACHI, March 22: Health experts at a seminar said on Thursday that 16 per cent people of the country suffered from night blindness or nyctalopia — a condition that impairs vision in low light and is a symptom of several diseases.

They said that cataract, myopia, glaucoma, and vitamin A deficiency were some treatable causes of night blindness.

The seminar entitled 'Night blindness — a threat to road safety' was organised at a local hotel by the National Highways and Motorway Police (NH&MP) in collaboration with the Vision Foundation, an Okara-based NGO committed to fighting blindness in all its forms.

Additional Inspector-General of the NH&MP Farooq Azam opened the session saying that organising seminars was part of the overall NH&MP strategy, whose mandate had steadily been expanding since 1999, and that the topic of night blindness was chosen because it had been the cause behind numerous accidents on the motorway.

Short presentations on causes, symptoms and treatment of night blindness and other eye-related ailments were given by the Sindh health department additional secretary, Dr Mehwish Khan from the Layton Rahmatulla Benevolent Trust (LRBT), Dr Javed Hassan Niazi from the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), Dr Qazi Wasiq of the Ophthalmological Society of Pakistan's (OSP) Karachi chapter and Prof Idrees Adhi from the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS).

The doctors emphasised that 'vision' was a broad term and that quality of eyesight was determined after checking for colour vision, darkness adaptation, visual fields, contrast sensitivity, refractive errors, photophobia and depth perception, to name a few.

Islahuddin Siddiqui, a former hockey player and now Goodwill Ambassador of the NH&MP, also gave a brief talk.

The speakers highlighted the need for regular eyesight checkups of local population and called for the issuance of driving licence in a lawful manner to help reduce number of accidents.

Mr Azam also announced that it might soon be within the capacity of the NH&MP to conduct vehicle fitness checking as well as issue driving licences. He appealed to the people who were the stakeholders to provide their feedback.

The seminar closed on a moving speech by Vision Foundation President Engineer Akram Lodhi who highlighted the difficulty in coping with blindness.

“Going blind is like dying while being alive,” he said, “and those who go blind at a young age spend their lives living and dying.”

Federal Minister for Communications Dr Arbab Alamgir Khan, who was the chief guest of the session, was not able to attend.