President Ram Nath Kovind will confer the "National Award for Divyangjan, 2017" at a function organized by Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment on International Day of Persons with Disabilities on 3rd December, 2017 in Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, stated an official release.
According to the release, Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Thaawarchand Gehlot; Minister of States for Social Justice and Empowerment, Krishan Pal Gurjar and Ramdas Athawale will also be present the occasion.

Indian-origin researchers have identified an enzyme that serves as a critical trigger for the damaging inflammation that ultimately leads to macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss among the elderly.

The finding, published in the journal Nature Medicine, may allow doctors to halt the inflammation early on, potentially saving patients from blindness.

Every fifth blind person in the world is an Indian. Of the 15 million blind people in India, 1.1 million suffer from corneal blindness. And, 25,000 new cases are added to this backlog annually. A compilation of data from last year shows that only 25,713 transplant procedures were conducted. In order to manage the problem, there is an urgent need to perform 100,000 transplant surgeries every year.

Images used to educate the public about vision loss due to the leading causes of blindness are not fit for purpose, according to a new study from City, University of London.

The researchers found that the image commonly used to represent a condition called age-related macular degeneration(AMD), which affects more than 600,000 people in the UK, did not provide a realistic representation of people's experiences.

They are two diseases with two different parasites. So for decades, river blindness and lymphatic filariasis have been combatted separately, through different treatment campaigns and by different health organizations and initiatives.