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World Sight Day is observed worldwide every year on the second Thursday of October. This World Health Organization-designated day falls on 13 October this year. The purpose of World Sight Day is to increase public awareness about blindness, vision impairment, vision care, and ocular issues. The WHO estimates that 1 billion people worldwide suffer from near or distant vision impairment due to delayed diagnosis and treatment. Although it can affect individuals of any age group, those over 50 years of age are more likely to experience it. Blindness or vision impairment can limit a person’s everyday life, prospects for employment and other aspects of their personal lives, including their ability to travel.
World Sight Day 2022 Theme:
This year, the theme for World Sight Day is “love your eyes.” The Love Your Eyes campaign urges people to put their personal eye health first while fighting for globally accessible, reasonably priced, and readily available eye care.
History of World Sight Day:
The Lions Club Foundation, in collaboration with organisations dedicated to preventing blindness worldwide, was the entity that first established World Sight Day. The first celebration was held on 8 October 1984. Later, the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IABP) coordinated and recognised it as VISION 2020, and it became a collaborative programme directed by the WHO and IABP members in which non-government organisations, eye care groups, and eye hospitals may participate and spread awareness about these challenges from anywhere in the globe.
For years, the Lions Club Foundation, the World Health Organization, and the IABP have worked to recognise this day and ask governments and the health ministries for assistance in developing organisations that provide eye care.
Significance of World Sight Day:
World Sight Day is observed in many ways all across the world. Queen Elizabeth II had participated in the activities in 2020. From Brooklyn to Bangladesh, almost three million declarations of ‘love your eyes’ were logged in 2021. The IABP anticipates a bigger World Sight Day celebrations in 2022 than ever before, with events, vision tests, and advocacy taking place all around the world.
Eye health has an impact on a number of other Sustainable Development Goals, including education, employment, quality of life, and poverty. The organisation invites groups and the general public to join together on this World Sight Day to actively call on governments, businesses, institutions, and people to support accessibility to eye health.
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