World Sight Day, 11th October, 2012
Theme - "The Integrated Eye Care Team – Working Together to Eliminate Avoidable Blindness"

Athokpam Rightkumari Devi *

World Sight Day (WSD) is an annual day of awareness held on the second Thursday of October, to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment.'World Sight Day' as the name suggests, is a day that is dedicated to pledging perfect vision for every individual on earth. The World Sight Day initiative is organized under the Vision 2020 global initiative.

What is vision 2020?

Vision 2020: the right to sight, a global initiative to eliminate avoidable blindness was launched by WHO on 18th February, 1999. One significant way in which this initiative differs from previous ones is that the concept centres around Rights issues. Recognition of sight as a fundamental human right by all countries can be an important catalyst of initiatives for the prevention and control of blindness.

The objective of the vision 2020 is to assist member countries in developing sustainable systems which will enable them to eliminate avoidable blindness from major causes, i.e. cataract, xerophthalmia, and other causes of childhood blindness, refractive error and low vision, trachoma and other causes of corneal blindness by the year 2020.

What do people do?

The World Health Organization (WHO), which is the UN's directing and coordinating authority for health, and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) are actively involved in coordinating events and activities for World Sight Day. Associations such as Lions Clubs International have also been actively involved in promoting the day on an annual basis for many years. Many communities, associations, and non-government organizations work together with WHO and IAPB to promote the day.

Other activities include taking part in awareness-raising walks or distributing and displaying posters, bookmarks, booklets and other forms of information the raise awareness about preventable blindness.

Why they are working together?

They are working together for the following purposes:

• To raise public awareness of blindness and vision impairment as major international public health issues.
• To influence governments, particularly health ministers, to participate in and designate funds for national blindness prevention programs.
• To educate target audiences about blindness prevention, about VISION 2020 and its activities, and to generate support for VISION 2020 program activities.

• Partial blindness means person have very limited vision.
• Complete blindness means person cannot see anything and do not see light.

The magnitude of visual impairment and blindness and their causes have been estimated, globally and by WHO region from recent data. For countries without data estimates were based on newly developed model. Globally the number of people of all ages visually impaired is estimated to be 285 million, of whom 39 million are blind. People 50 years and older are 82% of all blind.

The major causes of visual impairment are uncorrected refractive errors (43%) and cataract (33%); the first cause of blindness is cataract (51%). Visual impairment in 2010 is a major global health issue: the preventable causes are as high as 80% of the total global burden. (Ref: Pascolini D, Mariotti SPM. Global estimates of visual impairment: 2010. British Journal Ophthalmology Online First published December 1, 2011 as 10.1136/bjophthalmol-2011-300539).

Why we need to celebrate this day?

Our sight is so important to us and yet many people fail to look after their eye health, which unfortunately can lead to sight impairment or even vision loss. Around half of all sight loss can be avoided, so it's really important that people can easily get access to expert information about how to look after their eyes.

It can encourage people to take positive steps to protect their sight, an action aimed at ultimately improving the nation's eye health and contributing towards a reduction in avoidable sight loss. Many age-related conditions can be successfully treated if detected early.

References

1. Park K.s "Textbook of preventive and social medicine ", 18th edition, 2008, Jabalpur, Bhannot publishers.
2. World Health Organization (WHO)
3. How are your eyes feeling?
4. Vision 2020