Prevention of myopia, China

Prevention of myopia, China Catherine Jan,a Ling Li,b Lisa Keay,c Randall S Stafford,d Nathan Congdone & Ian Morganf a The George Institute for Global Health, University of New South Wales, 1 King Street, Newtown, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 2042, Australia. b National School of Development, Peking University, Beijing, China. c School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. d School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, United States of America. e Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland. f Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Correspondence to Catherine Jan (email: jlingxue@gmail.com). (Submitted: 9 July 2019 – Revised version received: 28 January 2020 – Accepted: 5 February 2020 – Published online: 28 April 2020) Myopia (or short-sightedness) is a global health and social problem. Researchers have estimated that in China, myopia caused a 244 billion United States dollars loss in productivity in 2015.1 China’s approach to its burden of childhood myopia illustrates the problem’s magnitude but also outlines solutions that could be potentially relevant to other countries. Here we outline China’s national myopia policy, discuss the related scientific evidence and conclude with specific recommendations on the way forward.