Global Poverty and Blindness

Lawson Ung graduated from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s master of science program in epidemiology and he plans to return in the fall to begin a Ph.D. program. Ung is interested in the intersection between global poverty and blindness. Ung sees the relationship between eye injury, poverty, and loss of human potential as a call to action.

Did you know that eighty percent of the global population of blind people live in low- and middle-income countries, where eye injuries are common and eye doctors are far and few between? Easily treatable conditions lead to corneal ulcers, infections, and blindness. The result: many can’t earn a living because of blindness.

“Corneal infections tend to be particularly severe. If you lose transparency of the front window of the eye, the cornea, then the ability of light to transmit to the back of the eye, the retina, is limited,” said Ung “Even tiny abrasions to the front surface of the eye can develop very quickly to blinding ulcers, blinding infections of the cornea.”

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“Finding a call to action in global poverty and blindness”