§ Nick HarveyTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will estimate the cost to(a) the NHS, (b) individuals, (c) families and carers, (d) local authorities and (e) taxpayers of 3,000 people losing their sight; and if he will make a statement. [138055]
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§ Ms Rosie WintertonWe have not made any assessment of these costs. The costs of blindness will differ according to who becomes blind and when. It is not possible to separate the costs of blindness and partial sight given current information.
The latest estimates of the costs of blindness and visual impairment are from a study commissioned for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association in July this year.1
The report's estimates of the annual non-treatment costs for people registered blind or partially sighted in England in various groupings are shown in table 1.
Table 1: Estimate of annual non-treatment costs for people with blindness/partial sight £ Estimate per person Children 1,123 Working age 19,841 Elderly 4,980 Total 7,561 Notes: 1 These costs make assumptions, based on expert opinion and judgments from the literature, about typical income received from: disability living allowance, carer's allowance, vision rehabilitation services, income support, job seeker's allowance, tax allowances; the provision of community based healthcare and the numbers of blind and partially sighted people unemployed. 2 The major costs are for those of working age which may be overstated since the report makes assumptions about the lost productivity to the economy related to unemployment among the blind and visually impaired and assumes that this can be represented by average earnings. If there are flexible labour markets and non-negligible unemployment then some portion of this "lost" productivity will be recovered through other workers. 3 Costs could be overestimates since it is not clear from the research whether these are the costs incurred by an average blind or partially sighted person, or the costs that are directly attributable to their blindness or partial sight, for example, some of those who are unemployed and blind or partially sighted would have been unemployed if they were not blind or partially sighted. It is not possible to identify treatment costs specifically for those who are blind (or as a result of blindness) from NHS data sources. It is possible to identify the costs of treatment for glaucoma and cataracts, which are both conditions that are associated with low vision and can lead to blindness. The costs shown in table 2 are from the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association report.
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Table 2: Estimate of treatment costs for cataracts and glaucoma £ Estimate per person Glaucoma 1,016 Cataracts 688 Finally, the literature on the "out-of-pocket costs" for blind patients has been reviewed by the Royal National Institute for the Blind. At 2000 prices, these are estimated to be around £52 per person per week.
1"The costs of blindness: An analysis of the costs of visual impairment and blindness in the United Kingdom". July 2003, Ethical Strategies Limited. The report can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.healthyeyes.org.uk/index.php?id=25.