Professor Sobha Sivaprasad, Director of NIHR Moorfields Clinical Research Facility, has been honoured by the Asia-Pacific Vitreo-retina Society (APVRS) with this year’s International Award Lecture.
The annual award acknowledges vitreoretinal experts from beyond the Asia-Pacific region who have advanced the field of ophthalmology and demonstrated outstanding leadership. APVRS President Professor Hiroko Terasaki presented Sobha with the award at the 17th APVRS Congress in Singapore on 22 November.
Delivering the award lecture on ‘Conquering global disparities in the management of diabetic retinopathy (DR)’, Sobha set out the scale of the challenge. Three in four people with diabetes live in low and middle income countries. However, much of the research on DR is done in high income countries, mainly on white populations, despite the fact that non-white ethnic groups form the majority of the global population with diabetes.
Sobha outlined novel solutions for tackling the problem, including use of offline AI-integrated mydriatic or non-mydriatic cameras for diagnosis in community settings, and new randomised controlled trials, to reduce the risk of vision threatening diabetic retinopathy in low and middle income countries.
26 November 2024
Sobha Sivaprasad is Director of NIHR Moorfields Clinical Research Facility, consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Professor of Retinal Clinical Research at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology.