Women More Prone to Eye Troubles

Here are some intriguing statistics compiled by the WomensEyeHealth.org, one of the sponsors of April as Women's Eye Health and Safety Month:

Worldwide
Some 37 million people are blind, and around 124 million have low vision.

Two-thirds of both blind and visually impaired people are women.

Most blind and visually impaired people (80%) live in developing countries.

Major risk factors for poor vision are age, gender, and socioeconomic development.

In the U.S.
Experts estimate that more than 1 million individuals (70% women) are legally blind.

Of the 3.4 million Americans suffering from visual impairment, about 2.3 million are women.

A higher percentage of women suffer visual impairment because women usually outlive men.

There's also the possibility that women are biologically, hormonally, or immunologically predisposed to some eye diseases.