World Sight Day is an annual day of awareness held on the second Thursday of October, to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment. This year it is being held on the 12th October 2018.
World Sight Day is coordinated by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) under the VISION 2020 global initiative which aims to promote “a world in which nobody is needlessly visually impaired”.
The main aims of World Sight Day include:
- To raise public awareness of issues surrounding blindness and visual impairment.
- To influence Governments / Ministers of Health to participate in and designate funds to blindness prevention programmes.
- To educate about blindness prevention.
- To generate support for Vision 2020 programme and activities.
This year’s theme is Eye Care Everywhere. The aim that everyone, everywhere has access to good eye health.
According to the IAPB Vision Atlas, there are
- 253 million people blind or vision impaired (in 2015)
- More that 75% of all blindness and moderate distance vision impairment is avoidable.
- 89% of vision impaired people live in low and middle-income countries
- 55% of moderate or severely vision impaired people are women
For more information on how you can support World Sight Day achieve their aims click here
