Eye health measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 2025
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) released the 2025 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander eye health measures reports on 19 February 2026. This is the ninth annual report to update the eye health measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – the series of reports now extends back to 2017.
Eye diseases and vision problems are the most common long-term health conditions reported by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nations) people. The measures reported cover the prevalence of eye health conditions, diagnosis and treatment services, the eye health workforce and outreach services. Subject to data availability, the report examines differences between First Nations people and non-Indigenous Australians, as well as differences by factors such as age, sex, remoteness, jurisdiction and lower-level geographies. The report provides an evidence base for monitoring changes in eye health amongst First Nations people over time, their access and use of eye health services, and for identifying gaps in service delivery. This report includes the latest available data against each measure where possible.
A suite of products have been released in addition to the main report, as listed below:
Eye health measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 2025 (main report)
Eye health measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 2025: In brief (summary report)
Eye health measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 2025: Interactive data (online)
Eye health measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 2025: In focus (state and territory reports for each jurisdiction).
Highlights of the 2025 reports include:
The Australian Eye and Ear Health Survey (AEEHS) was published in late 2025 and data from this survey has been included in the 2025 eye health measures reports. This allows updating prevalence measures and shows, for people aged 50 and over, a prevalence of bilateral vision impairment of 11% and a prevalence of bilateral blindness of 0.2%. The three leading causes of vision impairment and blindness, for people aged 50 and over, were uncorrected refractive error (38%), cataract (34%) and diabetic retinopathy (15%).
AIHW notes that AEEHS was conducted between August 2022 and July 2025; included 4,519 participants of whom 617 (14%) were Indigenous; differences in survey methodology and design does not allow direct comparison with the 2016 NEHS; and that AEEHS results are not weighted to the Australian population.
The second report of jurisdictional eye health measures are published as ‘infocus’ reports by AIHW. All eight jurisdictions have bespoke, individual reports presenting jurisdictional information against national and other jurisdictional data. The first jurisdictional infocus reports were published in 2024.
Improvements are noted from the 2024 report (released in October 2024) for 7 measures (or sub-measures) out of the 37 reported and 3 measures (or sub-measures) appear to be worsening. The improving measures include trachoma prevalence (reduced) and annual health assessments (increased) and the worsening measures are related to longer cataract surgery waiting times.
