Eye care in Ethiopia faces major challenges.
These include a lack of eye health workers and the high prevalence of trachoma.
A 2020 survey by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness estimates 8.8 million people are living with vision loss in Ethiopia. Out of this number, 780,000 people are blind.
Major causes of vision loss in Ethiopia include cataracts, glaucoma, refractive error and trachoma.
Trachoma is the largest cause of infectious blindness in the world. Recent years have seen the elimination of trachoma from a number of other countries. Now, 52% of the global population at risk from this blinding eye disease live in Ethiopia.