International Conference on Myopia

The first International Conference on Myopia was sponsored by the Myopia Interna- tional Research Foundation in New York City in 1964. The second conference was held in San Francisco in 1984, the third in Rome in 1986, the fourth in Singapore in 1990, and the fifth in Toronto in 1994. The conferences were held every four years as satellite meetings within the Interna- tional Congress of Ophthalmology. In recent years, however, the incidence of myopia throughout the world and the mechanisms of myopia have been has increased rapidly studied by many researchers using animal models. Against this background, at the fifth conference, held in Toronto in 1994, it was decided to hold the International Conference on Myopia every two years. I am honored that the organizing committee selected me as the host for the sixth International Conference on Myopia. Progress in the field in the two years between the fifth and the sixth Interna- tional Conferences on Myopia, has been astounding. Although the mechanisms of myopia have not been clarified, many questions concerning myopia are arising from disciplines representing the entire spectrum from clinical findings to molecular biology. Thus, in the sixth International Conference on Myopia, the program provided for discussion of a wide variety of subjects, including epidemiology, pathogenesis, experimental myopia, and treatment. A number of doctors from Asian countries, where the incidence of myopia is especially high, reported on recent epidemiology in their countries.