National Eye Health Week – Our new ambition

Hold the front page! ‘Charity announces plans to raise more money!’

Well, not news really is it? We’ve been doing that for 31 years. We’ve funded millions of pounds of research and helped hundreds of thousands of people with macular disease. But, it’s not enough. Macular disease is still incurable and most is not even treatable.

We don’t reach everyone who needs our support and the number of people is set to double in the next 31 years. It’s got to stop! We need to find new treatments, ways to prevent macular disease and even a cure. For that we need to fund much more medical research.

So, yes we’re announcing plans to raise more money to fund much more world-class research! We’re going to tell the world what it’s really like to have macular disease and why this awful condition needs to be a national priority just like cancer, dementia and mental illness are.

Eighty-seven per cent of people say they value their sight above any other sense. Many fear blindness more than serious diseases like cancer or diabetes. And yet it is not a health priority and only a tiny fraction - one fifth of one percent - of public research funds are spent on macular disease. It’s not enough. It’s time to change - it’s time to beat macular disease. 

This is our new ambition. We cannot achieve it without you – but with you we cannot fail.

- Cathy Yelf, chief executive of the Macular Society