ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
More than 500 million people around the world have vision loss that could be solved with a simple pair of reading glasses. Adrian Ma with The Indicator From Planet Money looked into why so many people are living without them.
ADRIAN MA, BYLINE: Across large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, unaddressed vision loss is a really common problem. And it doesn't just affect individuals. It affects economies.
PELIN MUNIS: The data shows that there's $410 billion of economic loss annually due to vision impairment and lack of access to eye glasses, which is pretty staggering.
MA: Pelin Munis is CEO of RestoringVision. And the main thing they're trying to tackle is helping people who are experiencing near vision loss as they age. In medical terms, this is called presbyopia.
MUNIS: Presbyopia happens usually in your 40s, but in a lot of countries, it can happen as early as in your 30s.
MA: Pelin says some people may not even realize that their vision can be fixed with something as simple as a pair of reading glasses.
MUNIS: In cases where they do know that glasses exist, oftentimes they're very expensive.
MA: And so what is the root of the problem here? Pelin says it basically boils down to this. In many places, there isn't a demand for reading glasses. And also, there isn't a supply. In other words, there isn't a market. So the way that RestoringVision tries to take on this problem is by tackling the demand side of the equation first. They do that by working with local NGOs and governments in dozens of countries to try and get people screened for presbyopia.
MUNIS: So a lot of the work we do - individuals will get their first pair of glasses at no cost to them, and this is where we start to see the markets.
MA: But the market isn't really working until there's supply to meet demand. You know, you have to increase the number of places that sell the product. So Pelin says they're working on building out those supply channels and even talked with employers about the benefits of providing reading glasses for their employees.
MUNIS: By providing somebody with a pair of reading glasses in order for them to do their near-vision work for their employment purposes, you see productivity increases of up to 32%, which is pretty significant.
MA: You're essentially, like, trying to jump-start a market that, in a lot of countries, doesn't really exist.
MUNIS: Correct.
MA: Now, if you're wondering, what does this market creation process look like on the ground, you could look to Nigeria. That's where Dr. Oteri Okolo lives. Oteri oversees this program aimed at getting people who are living in rural areas screened for vision problems, including presbyopia. And if needed, they give them a free or low-cost pair of reading glasses.
OTERI OKOLO: You can easily train just about anyone to be able to dispense the glasses - reading glasses - to the general population.
MA: So this program has been going on for about a year. And Oteri says at first, the rollout hit an unexpected obstacle. The eye exams were taking a weirdly long time.
OKOLO: So the lines were building up, and people - the crowds, you know, are becoming uncontrollable. And when we investigated, we realized that the primary health care workers there were slow because they themselves couldn't quite see clearly.
MA: It turned out that a lot of these health care workers could not see clearly because they themselves had presbyopia. They needed reading glasses, too. Adrian Ma, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUN B AND STATIK SELEKTAH SONG, "SUPERSTARR (FEAT. MEECHY DARKO, CJ FLY AND HAILE SUPREME)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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