Educational Info on World Sight Day

What is World Sight Day?

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. The goal is to raise public awareness of blindness & vision impairment as major international public health issues, and to educate people about blindness prevention.

cbm key messages:

Vision impairment and blindness are disabilities.
Cataract is responsible for about half of all blindness in the Pacific region; other causes are Vitamin A deficiency in children, trauma and disease.
The global cost of vision loss is estimated to be nearly USD $3 billion dollars for the 733 million people in the world living with low vision and blindness in 2010.
Blindness and visual impairments left create a barrier to full participation in the economy and society, in the Pacific and worldwide.
People with disabilities, including those with visual impairments, have a right to be fully included into their communities.

International Key Messages from Vision 2020

Approximately 314 million people worldwide live with low vision and blindness
Of these, 45 million people are blind and 269 million have low vision
145 million people have low vision due to uncorrected refractive errors (near-sightedness, far-sightedness or astigmatism). In most of these cases, normal vision could be restored with eyeglasses
Women face a significantly greater risk of vision loss than men - two-thirds of blind people worldwide are women & girls
90% of blind people live in low-income countries
Yet 80% of blindness is avoidable- i.e. readily treatable and/or preventable
Restorations of sight, and blindness prevention strategies are among the most cost-effective interventions in health care
Infectious causes of blindness are decreasing as a result of public health interventions and socio-economic development. Blinding trachoma now affects fewer than 80 million people, compared to 360 million in 1985
Ageing populations and lifestyle changes mean that chronic blinding conditions such as diabetic retinopathy are projected to rise exponentially
Without effective, major intervention, the number of blind people worldwide has been projected to increase to 76 million by 2020


Blindness	Orthopaedics	Deafness	Community	Emergencies	Rehabilitation

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Educational Info on World Sight Day

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