What is World Sight Day?
World Sight Day (WSD) is an international day of awareness, held annually on the second Thursday of October to focus attention on the global issue of avoidable blindness and visual impairment. It is co-ordinated by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and became an official IAPB event in the year 2000, and has been marked in many different ways in countries around the world each year since then.
World Sight Day is the focal Advocacy and PR event for IAPB and its members and partners each year, highlighting the fact that 80% of blindness is avoidable (i.e. preventable and/or treatable) – 4 out of 5 people have avoidable visual impairment.
WSD provides a platform for organisations to encourage governments, corporations, institutions and individuals to actively support global blindness prevention efforts.
WSD is co-ordinated by IAPB under the VISION 2020 Global Initiative. The theme, and certain core materials are generated by IAPB. All events are organised independently by members and supporter organisations.
Do you know that on this day IAPB members (of which Nigeria is among) work together to:
- Raise public awareness of blindness & vision impairment as major international public health issues
- Influence Governments/Ministers of Health to participate in and designate funds for national blindness prevention programmes
- Educate target audiences about blindness prevention, about VISION 2020 and to generate support for VISION 2020 programme activities?
Looking back:
In 2007 October 11, the "Call For Action" was "Vision For Children" which targeted causes of blindness and visual handicap in children.
In 2008 October 9, the "Call For Action" was "Eye on the Future: fighting visual impairment in later life" which targeted causes of blindness in the elderly, their causes and approaches to manage them, but above all measures to avoid them was brought to limelight.
In 2009 October 8, the "Call For Action" was "Gender eye health: equal access to eye care" aimed at bridging the gap in access eye care among the sexes. It tend to ensure that women were given equal opportunity at eye care as men!
In 2010 October 14, the "Call For Action" was "Countdown to 2020". A reflection of how far we have gone in our quest to eliminate avoidable blindness and what needs to be done were brought to the fore-front and ironed out!
In 2011 October 13, the "Call For Action" was "Working together to eliminate avoidable blindness" were Optometrists, Ophthalmologists and other health care professionals were called up to work together such that avoidable causes of blindness can be eliminated. It put into cognizance the strained relationship between us and other eye care professionals and health care professionals towards the issue of blindness or visual impairment.
In 2012 October 11, there was no "Call For Action", it was aimed at allowing eye care professionals to develop priority areas aimed at putting words into actions such that the birth of the next Road map towards achieving the primary goals of World Sight day celebration can be crafted.
This brings us to 2013!
2013 is a special year in that a new road map for 2014-2019 is put forward with an overall theme of "Universal Eye health." The intention is to find a way to universally include primary eye care into universal primary health care service. Visual impairment is on the increase and primary eye care is the easiest way to bring it down to a very low level.
The key message of this new road map are as follows:
- Approximately 285 million people worldwide live with low vision and blindness
- Of these, 39 million people are blind and 246 million have moderate or severe visual impairment
- 90% of blind people live in low-income countries
- Yet 80% of visual impairment is avoidable - i.e. readily treatable and/or preventable
- Restorations of sight, and blindness prevention strategies are among the most cost-effective interventions in heath care.
- The number of people blind from infectious causes has greatly reduced in the past 20 years
- An estimated 19 million children are visually impaired
- About 65 % of all people who are visually impaired are aged 50 and older, while this age group comprises only 20% of the world's population
- Increasing elderly populations in many countries mean that more people will be at risk of age-related visual impairment.
for more information go to www.iapb.org.
Thank you World Health Organization and International Agency For Blindness Prevention for not relenting in ensuring the actualization of Vision 2020.
An after thought:
I am currently organizing school children for eye examination to find out those in need of glasses. New Eyes for the Needy International donated about 1080 free frames for distribution to those in need of glasses. I will give out 300 glasses to children in schools within Bonny Island and provide reading glasses for school teachers. It is a week-long event!
Do you know that World Teachers Day fell on this same day?
You can call it co-incidence, but I call it a reward to our teachers who made us who we are today! Happy Teachers Day! Happy World Sight Day!
GET YOUR EYES TESTED TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
