World Sight Day 14th October 2010

World Sight Day is an annual day of awareness to focus global attention on blindness, visual impairment and rehabilitation of the visually impaired.

According to new preliminary data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) , worldwide, 285.3 million people are visually impaired.  In the last 10 years, VISION 2020: The Right to Sight (a joint global initiative of the International Agency for the Prevention for Blindness (IAPB) and WHO) has contributed to a 10% reduction in the number of visually impaired people worldwide, which was annouced at a meeting hosted by WHO in Geneva earlier this week, as part of the World Sight Day activities. All the more impressive is that this is set against a growing global population and an 18% increase in the world's population aged over 50, the population most vulnerable to visual impairment. The number of blind people has decreased by 5.2million (from 45 million in 2004 to 39.8 million in th present day), representing a decline of 13% in the last six years. ⁱ

While the new figures represent a significant achievement, challenges remain if VISION 2020 is to achieve its goal of eliminating the main cause of avoidable blindness by the year 2020.  Among these are that nearly half of the cases of visual impairment are due to uncorrected refractive errors (such as nearsightedness), in most of which cases normal vision could be restored with eye glasses. While blinding infection diseases such as trachoma (a persistent, contagious form of conjunctivities) and onchocerciasis (river blindness) are on target for global eradicaiton by 2020ⁱⁱ, chronic causes of blindness, such as cataract, age related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy are growing in prevalence worldwide, even in the developed world. This highlights the modern trend whereby infectious diseases are decreasing as a result of public health inteventions, while cronic diseases, which affect both the developed and the developing world are on the rise.

ⁱWHO, Preliminary Data, October 2010.

ⁱⁱ World Health Organizsation. The World Health Report. Disease Trends. Accessed August 10,2010 at: http://www.who.int/whr/1998/media_centre/executive_summary3/en/index2.html

For more information see Vision 2020