The number of people with visual impairments over the age of 50 has increased 131 percent from 2012 to 2013, according to a report released by the Ebsar Foundation, a charity helping those with these disabilities.

Mohammed Tawfik Bellow, general secretary of the organization, said the charity was helping people of all ages to get some vision back so that they can “at least do their daily errands.”

Bellow said that retinal diseases generally cause visual impairment. However, diabetes still causes the most visual disabilities. He said a growing number of elderly people who visit the clinic are referred from private hospitals.

He said over 80 percent of the referrals have benefited from the charity’s clinical services. He said the organization faces various challenges including the lack of fulltime staff to deal with rising numbers of people seeking treatment.

The Ebsar Foundation report also stated that its programs cost SR900,917, or 14 percent of its total expenses in 2013. About SR39,283 of this amount was allocated as financial aid for poor and needy persons to buy visual aids which they are trained to use. Another SR28,618 was spent to upgrade the clinic’s equipment.

The report stated that the organization helped 85 people, or 81 percent of its patients, to improve their vision. Others have also benefitted from the visual aids and treatment provided by the clinic.

The vision of 19 percent of the patients did not get better, the report said, because of severe visual impairment, or because they did not use any aids.

The report said that the clinic gave patients 255 devices and training to use them. It also helped people become more mobile, use computers, learn Braille and do other daily activities.

The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) had forecast in its report in 2010 that there would be an increasing number of elderly people in many countries with age-related visual impairment.

The IAPB report also indicated that 65 percent of the visual impaired were persons over the age of fifty. This segment was equal to 20 percent of the world’s population.