This month marks the third anniversary of KeepSight, Australia’s diabetes eye screening initiative – a public/private partnership designed to tackle diabetes-related blindness in Australia.
 
Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in working age Australians. On average one in three people with diabetes will develop some form of diabetes eye disease. That’s a sobering statistic.
 
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Evidence shows that early detection and timely treatment can prevent most diabetes-related vision loss.
 
KeepSight is a program that provides people with diabetes with reminders when their regular eye checks are due making it easier for people to schedule appointments. That means if issues do develop, they are detected early when they are still treatable. The program is proving popular for people with diabetes- in less that three years, nearly 250,000 people have signed up to the program.
 
KeepSight has the potential to fundamentally ‘shift the dial’ on diabetes-related blindness in Australia. The premise is simple. By encouraging people with diabetes to get their eyes checked more regularly, we can help them to keep their sight. 
 
And once we know someone has registered, and is getting regular checks, we can focus our efforts on those people who may be at risk of losing their sight because they’re not getting checked.

For more information www.keepsight.org.au