Among them 65,000 are blind due to cataract alone which can be cured by providing an intra-ocular lens through a simple and cost effective surgery, accordingly to the summary Report of The Bangladesh National Blindness and Low Vision Survey.

The Report also said that over 80 percent of them are living in rural areas and over 6 million people need vision correction.

Globally, every 5 seconds one person goes blind while one child goes blind every minute which is four times the world average of a child per minute, according to a study by London International Centre for Eye House (ICEH).

Presently there are 45 million blind people across the globe and 90 percent of them are in the developing countries, while another 135 million suffer from low vision, said the ICEH study.

In Bangladesh around 150,000 are surviving irreversible blind due to malnutrition and lack of awareness on prevention and proper treatment of blindness.

Referring to their findings of the first National Epidemiological Study on Childhood Blindness, the ophthalmologists concluded that, among the total blind children in the country 68 percent or seven out of every ten could have been saved by prevention and treatment whereas 32 percent by prevention and 36 percent by treatment.

"There are only 626 ophthalmologists against a minimum requirement of 1400 in the country," said M Jalaluddin Khan, national programme adviser of Vision 2020 co-ordination. Vision 2020 is working to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020.

He also said that among them 350 are practising in the capital and the government health services have only 103 posts for them.

The eye care specialists pointed out that most of the cataract blind children born in village as most of the rural women normally suffer from malnutrition and lack of vitamin A.

Experts have also suggested that people especially mothers should eat vegetables regularly especially colour vegetables including bean, radish, gourd, pumpkin, arum brinjal, tomato, carrot, lady's finger etc that have full of vitamin A.

A lot of children in the country have also been suffering from malnutrition and lack of vitamin A after birth, said Professor Shah Md Bulbul Islam of National Medical College and Hospital, Dhaka.

"Most of the government district hospitals do not have operation theatre dedicated for eye, male and female ward for eye patients and sufficient equipment and Upazila Health Complexes also lack eye care facilities," Jalaluddin observed.

"Government should take necessary steps immediately to create trained manpower available in every district and midlevel eye care personnel cadre available to assist work of ophthalmologists for proper medical care," Dr M Shahabuddin, Associate Professor of National Institute of Ophthalmology told Star Health.

"Government in collaboration with NGOs should bring out a campaign across the country to create public awareness about their eyes," he also said.

Eye specialist Prof. Dr Deen Mohammad also suggested that government should set up eye department in every thana level hospitals and providing sufficient equipment.

Eye Experts feared that this incident of blindness would double by 2020 if adequate measures are not taken.

Meanwhile, World Sight Day (WSD) was globally observed on October 14 with a view to focusing attention on problems of blindness and raising awareness about the problem of avoidable blindness.

The coalition of many international organisations including WHO (World Health Organisation) for VISION 2020: The Right to Sight, are working together on WSD to raise awareness of the global initiative to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020.

This year VISION 2020 has reached its fifth year and collected 20 million signatures from government ministries, key decision makers, eye professionals and the general public around the world.