The Eyes Have It is a partnership of Macular Society, Fight for Sight/Vision Foundation, RNIB, Association of Optometrists, The Royal College of Ophthalmologists, and Roche. Roche has funded the activities of the partnership.
The postcode lottery for eye care was highlighted to MPs during a week-long exhibition at the Houses of Parliament (3–7 March).
Opening on the evening of Monday 3 March, the exhibition included a lottery-style machine that allowed MPs to see the state of eye care in 64 NHS health geographies across England, Scotland and Wales.
This included England’s 41 integrated care boards.
MPs were also introduced to sobering statistics on eye care – including that sight loss costs the UK economy £26.5 billion annually.
This number is expected to rise to £33.5 billion annually by 2032.
The exhibition was organised by The Eyes Have It, the Westminster lobbying group on eye care.
The group includes representatives from the AOP, the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, Fight for Sight, the Macular Society, and Roche.
The opening ceremony was attended by 13 MPs, with a further 15 engaging with The Eyes Have It partners throughout the week. One of those who attended was health and social care secretary Wes Streeting.
Throughout the week, The Eyes Have It took the opportunity to emphasise the four key challenges that it aims to address: the absence of a joined-up policy framework when it comes to eye care, an underutilised primary care workforce, lack of investment in secondary eye care capacity, and poor system interoperability.
Ellie Southwood MBE, director of impact and external affairs at Fight for Sight, told OT that emphasising a lack of geographic equity in eye care is The Eyes Have It’s top priority.
“This is an absolutely amazing opportunity to bring together the work of all the partners in The Eyes Have It, which spans everything from research to the support that people are receiving, and to really look at what the situation is for anyone in the UK at the moment experiencing sight loss,” Southwood said.
She added: “A postcode lottery exists in terms of the support that you might get – it might be really good in one area and really poor in another.
“I think everyone would agree that that’s not fair, but [the aim is] also to highlight the urgent need for joined-up pathways for people. Most of the public would assume that if you get a diagnosis of sight loss there is a process that kicks in; there is support that kicks in. It’s not true.”
Southwood emphasised that the situation as it currently stands does not have to continue.
“We’re here all week in the exhibition to really demonstrate what the situation is in localities across the UK, but also what we can do about it, and the urgency of getting that right in an era where we have an ageing population, and more people are losing sight,” she said, adding: “We don’t think that that has to be the case.”
We need eye health care to be a priority across the wider health and social care agenda
The exhibition took place in the lobby outside a committee corridor in the Houses of Parliament, with the aim of catching MPs as they went about their daily meetings.
Introducing the exhibition, Marsha de Cordova MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment, thanked The Eyes Have It partners and emphasised the extent of the ophthalmology waiting list.
“We need eye health care to be a priority across the wider health and social care agenda,” de Cordova said.
“Why is that? Because we’ve got more than two million people living with sight loss. 50% of all sight loss is avoidable. At the moment, ophthalmology is the largest and busiest outpatient service within the NHS, and waiting lists are continuing to grow. That means that people are losing their sight unnecessarily. We need to fix that.”
She added: “With this exhibition, I’m really hoping that parliamentarians will have the opportunity to come here, meet the experts, and find out what the eye healthcare picture looks like in their own constituencies. I think that, when people see those local figures, maybe they’ll want to say, ‘we need to change things.’”
Sir Stephen Timms MP, the social security and disability minister, emphasised the Government’s aim of increasing the number of people in work.
“If we want to achieve that, we have to do much, much better,” Timms said. “At the moment, there is an unemployment rate gap of 40 percentage points between those with sight loss and the working population as a whole.”
He added: “Thank you to all the partners for the work that has been done on this. Thank you for the exhibition, and for the opportunity for us in Parliament to be reminded just how important this is.
“All I ask is that we all work together to make sure that people with sight loss have better opportunities.”
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Ellie Southwood with patient Joe Pepper, who has benefited from Fight for Sight research, and Sir Stephen Timms MP speaking at the Westminster exhibition launch
Bringing the reality of eye care home
MPs could find out how many people are currently waiting for eye care in their own constituencies through The Eyes Have It’s Polimapper tool.
Throughout the week, passing MPs were encouraged to input their constituencies into iPads, which allowed them to see how many of their constituents are living with sight loss, and how many have been waiting more than 18 weeks for ophthalmology care compared to the national average.
Real patient stories were also highlighted on banners during the exhibition.
One story featured a woman with a retinal vein occlusion, who now lives with damage to her optic nerve after a series of delayed and cancelled ophthalmology appointments.
The exhibition explained how the woman can no longer drive due to her light sensitivity.
An example of good practice was also highlighted, through the story of a 45-year-old woman who was diagnosed with glaucoma at the age of 45 after experiencing headaches.
The patient, Paula, had no family history of glaucoma and was not considered to be at risk due to her age.
However, after diagnosis she received a successful trabeculectomy and her eyesight has remained stable throughout the subsequent 15 years.
Paula’s story was illustrated by the statistic that one in ten people who go blind in the UK do so because of glaucoma, a number that is expected to increase by 17% by 2032.
Copies of The Eyes Have It’s Laying the foundations for the future of eye health in England report, published in December 2023, were also available for MPs to take away.
An opportunity for recognition
The Eyes Have It’s Oliver Mann, a policy, value and access partner at Roche, told OT that recent news that NHS waiting lists have decreased is welcome, but emphasised that ophthalmology patients still make up 10% of those waiting for care.
“The impact of waiting lists is life-changing,” he said, adding that he hoped the exhibition would lead to “recognition of the impacts that NHS waiting lists are having on people living with sight loss and people newly diagnosed with eye conditions.”
“Days and weeks waiting can have a significant impact on their outcomes and their quality of life,” Mann said.
He added that the upcoming publication of the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan provides an opportunity to ensure that eye care is on the agenda at least for the rest of the current parliament.
He hopes that “ophthalmology services are taken seriously in order to improve outcomes for people living with sight loss,” he said.
The Eyes Have It has carried out “important foundational work for the past three years” and the hope is that the near future will allow that work to become reactive rather than proactive, Mann said.
Speaking about the Westminster exhibition, Mann added: “I hope that people will see it and think to reach out.”
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