Claim: Measles is one of the most common causes of child blindness worldwide.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: Childhood blindness
text: specifically vitamin A deficiency is a top causes of preventable childhood blindness. Though in measles cases, the administration of the vitamin to offset visual impairment has not been proven effective, as yet. Whether blindness is treatable depends upon the cause. Surgical intervention can be performed in PCG which is childhood glaucoma, usually starting early in childhood. Primary congenital glaucoma is caused by an abnormal drainage of the eye. However, surgical intervention is yet to prove effective. Braille is a universal way to learn how to read and write, for the blind. A refreshable braille display is an assistive learning device

title: Childhood immunizations in the United States
text: Measles is a respiratory disease caused by the virus of the same name, it normally grows in the cells that line the back of the throat and lungs. In pregnant women in can cause miscarriages or pre-mature births. While measles is almost gone from the United States, it still kills about 164,000 people each year around the world. In developing countries that suffer from malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency, measles has been known to kill as many as 1 out of 4 people and it is the leading cause of blindness among African children. Measles spreads from person to person

title: Melanie's Marvelous Measles
text: a kid with measles with the rash they were carried into the surgery and the child looked like a rag doll. The mother was terrified. It's still fatal. About one in 10,000 children will die because of encephalitis". "Even in 'industrialized countries', measles can cause encephalitis, seizures, blindness, heart and nervous system disorders, and (rarely) death". Dr. David Gorski, a renowned doctor, writes: "I'm sure children with whooping cough who are coughing so hard that they can't catch their breath for hours on end, with haemophilus influenzae type B who develop pneumonia or meningitis, with polio who develop paralysis, or

title: Vitamin A deficiency
text: Organization (WHO), VAD is under control in the United States, but in developing countries, VAD is a significant concern. Globally, 65% of all children aged 6 to 59 months received two doses of vitamin A in 2013, fully protecting them against VAD (80% in the least developed countries). The common cause of blindness in developing countries is Vitamin A deficiency (VAD). The WHO estimated in 1995 that 13.8 million children to have some degree of visual loss related to VAD. Night blindness and its worsened condition, xerophthalmia, are markers of Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and collections of keratin in the

title: Vitamin A deficiency
text: 500,000 malnourished children in the developing world go blind each year from a deficiency of vitamin A, around half of whom die within a year of becoming blind. The United Nations Special Session on Children in 2002 set a goal of the elimination of VAD by 2010. The prevalence of night blindness due to VAD is also high among pregnant women in many developing countries. VAD also contributes to maternal mortality and other poor outcomes in pregnancy and lactation. VAD also diminishes the ability to fight infections. In countries where children are not immunized, infectious diseases such as measles have

title: Refugee children
text: and other temporary settlements. Governments and organizations are working to address a number of them, such as measles, rubella, diarrhea, and cholera. Refugee children often arrive in the United States from countries with a high prevalence of infectious disease. Measles has been a major cause of child deaths in refugee camps and among internally displaced people; measles also exacerbates malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency. Some countries, such as Kenya, have developed preventative, detective, and curative programs to specifically target measles within the refugee children population. Kenya has reached over 20 million children with a measles and rubella immunization campaign carried

title: Center for World Health and Medicine
text: people in developing countries. In African a child dies from Malaria every 45 seconds. Sickle-Cell Disease- is a genetic disorder that causes hemoglobin to mis-fold and distortion of red blood cells. This results in a number of acute and chronic complications, including severe pain to shortened lifespan. Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) –is a group of inherited diseases characterized by progressive loss of photoreceptor cells in the eye leading to blindness. New therapies may be useful not only for RP, but also other ophthalmic disorders such as glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy, which are leading causes of blindness worldwide. CWHM

title: Childhood blindness
text: Childhood blindness Childhood blindness is an important cause contributing to the burden of blindness. Blindness in children can be defined as a visual acuity of <3/60 in the eye with better vision of a child under 16 years of age. This generally means that the child cannot see something three feet (about one meter) away, that another child could see if it was 60 feet (about 20 meters) away. There are many causes of blindness in children. Blindness may be due to genetic mutations, birth defects, premature birth, nutritional deficiencies, infections, injuries, and other causes. Severe retinopathy of prematurity (ROP),

title: Measles
text: of blindness. A systematic review of trials into its use found no reduction in overall mortality, but it did reduce mortality in children aged under two years. It is unclear if zinc supplementation in children with measles affects outcomes. Complications may include pneumonia, ear infections, bronchitis (either viral bronchitis or secondary bacterial bronchitis), and brain inflammation. Brain inflammation from measles has a mortality rate of 15%. While there is no specific treatment for brain inflammation from measles, antibiotics are required for bacterial pneumonia, sinusitis, and bronchitis that can follow measles. The majority of people survive measles, though in some cases,

title: Childhood blindness
text: blindness worldwide is approximately 1.4 million. 75% of the world’s blind children live in Africa and Asia. A 2014 review indicated that an estimated of 238,500 children with bilateral blindness (rate 1.2/1,000) in the Eastern Mediterranean region. VISION 2020 is a program launched by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and is supported by the WHO in 1999 that has made controlling blindness in children a high priority. Childhood blindness Childhood blindness is an important cause contributing to the burden of blindness. Blindness in children can be defined as a visual acuity of <3/60 in the eye

title: Retinopathy of prematurity
text: and the more advanced economies in South East Asia and the Middle east region. In these countries ROP is often the most common cause of blindness in children. ROP is highly likely to become an increasing problem in India, China and other countries in Asia as these countries expand the provision of services for premature infants. There is also evidence that the population of premature infants at risk of severe ROP varies depending on the level of neonatal intensive care being provided. In countries with high development indices and very low neonatal mortality rates (e.g. North America, western Europe), severe

title: Birth defect
text: simplex virus can cause microcephaly, microphthalmus (abnormally small eyeballs), retinal dysplasia, hepatosplenomegaly, and mental retardation. Both microphthalmus and retinal dysplasia can cause blindness. However, the most common symptom in infants is an inflammatory response that develops during the first three weeks of life. Hyperthermia causes anencephaly, which is when part of the brain and skull are absent in the infant. Mother exposure to toxoplasmosis can cause cerebral calcification, hydrocephalus (causes mental disabilities), and mental retardation in infants. Other birth abnormalities have been reported as well, such as chorioretinitis, microphthalmus, and ocular defects. Syphilis causes congenital deafness, mental retardation, and diffuse

title: Herpes simplex keratitis
text: is the most common cause of cornea-derived blindness in developed nations. Therefore, HSV infections are a large and worldwide public health problem. The global incidence (rate of new disease) of herpes keratitis is roughly 1.5 million, including 40,000 new cases of severe monocular visual impairment or blindness each year. Primary infection most commonly manifests as blepharoconjunctivitis i.e. infection of lids and conjunctiva that heals without scarring. Lid vesicles and conjunctivitis are seen in primary infection. Corneal involvement is rarely seen in primary infection. Recurrent herpes of the eye is caused by reactivation of the virus in a latently infected sensory

title: Visual impairment
text: best sign of pediatric glaucoma is an IOP of 21 mm Hg or greater present within a child. One of the most common causes of pediatric glaucoma is cataract removal surgery, which leads to an incidence rate of about 12.2% among infants and 58.7% among 10-year-olds. Childhood blindness can be caused by conditions related to pregnancy, such as congenital rubella syndrome and retinopathy of prematurity. Leprosy and onchocerciasis each blind approximately 1 million individuals in the developing world. The number of individuals blind from trachoma has decreased in the past 10 years from 6 million to 1.3 million, putting it

title: Measles
text: been introduced, rates may remain high. Measles is a leading cause of vaccine-preventable childhood mortality. Worldwide, the fatality rate has been significantly reduced by a vaccination campaign led by partners in the Measles Initiative: the American Red Cross, the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United Nations Foundation, UNICEF and the WHO. Globally, measles fell 60% from an estimated 873,000 deaths in 1999 to 345,000 in 2005. Estimates for 2008 indicate deaths fell further to 164,000 globally, with 77% of the remaining measles deaths in 2008 occurring within the Southeast Asian region. Five out of six

title: Measles
text: encephalitis, which often results in permanent brain damage. One or two out of every 1,000 children who become infected with measles will die from respiratory and neurological complications. Measles is caused by the measles virus, a single-stranded, negative-sense, enveloped RNA virus of the genus "Morbillivirus" within the family "Paramyxoviridae". The virus is highly contagious and is spread by coughing and sneezing via close personal contact or direct contact with secretions. It can live for up to two hours in that airspace or nearby surfaces. Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 90% of nearby non-immune people will

title: Clare Gilbert
text: income countries. One of Gilbert's contributions was to develop a system for classifying the causes blindness in children in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). Data collected by Gilbert and others raised awareness of the regional variation in the causes and magnitude of blindness in children, and control became one of the priorities of the global strategy of WHO and International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness to eliminate avoidable blindness, VISION 2020 – the Right to Sight. Other areas of Gilbert's research include population-based surveys of blindness and visual impairment, glaucoma and school eye health. Gilbert's research findings

title: Measles vaccine
text: elimination of the disease in the United States and other developed countries. While the vaccine is made with a live virus which can cause side effects, these are far fewer and less serious than the sickness and death caused by measles itself, side effects ranging from rashes to, rarely, convulsions, occur in a small percentage of recipients. Measles is common worldwide. Although it was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, high rates of vaccination and excellent communication with those who refuse vaccination are needed to prevent outbreaks and sustain the elimination of measles in the U.S. Of the 66

title: Measles
text: people with malnutrition. Most of those who die from the infection are less than five years old. Measles is not believed to affect other animals. Before immunization in the United States, between three and four million cases occurred each year. As a result of widespread vaccination, the disease was declared eliminated from the Americas in 2016. It, however, occurred again in 2017 and 2018 in this region. Symptoms typically begin 10–14 days after exposure. The classic symptoms include a four-day fever (the 4 D's) and the three C's—cough, coryza (head cold, fever, sneezing), and conjunctivitis (red eyes)—along with fever and

title: Visual impairment
text: walking. The most common causes of visual impairment globally are uncorrected refractive errors (43%), cataracts (33%), and glaucoma (2%). Refractive errors include near sighted, far sighted, presbyopia, and astigmatism. Cataracts are the most common cause of blindness. Other disorders that may cause visual problems include age related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, corneal clouding, childhood blindness, and a number of infections. Visual impairment can also be caused by problems in the brain due to stroke, premature birth, or trauma among others. These cases are known as cortical visual impairment. Screening for vision problems in children may improve future vision and educational