World Sight Day 2018(Wafrica Guest Post)

World Sight Day is an annual observation done on the second Thursday of October with the aim and goal of creating awareness on blindness and vision impairment. It was an initiation of by a group called Lions Club International Foundation in the year 2000 after which it was accepted by the World Health Organization to be duly observed as such.

Every Year there is a theme which is based on the current prevalence of visual impairment and the current trend of ocular diseases manifestations. This year the theme is Eye Care Everywhere which basically talks about taking visual health to the deprived communities also and not only those who are the privilege to be in the urban settlements.

On world sight day the vision atlas website updates its data on the prevalence of blindness and vision impairments that are avoidable, this has gone a long way to help keep the visual health department updated on the current trend of events in the visual health field. So what is the benefits of world sight day celebration?

Helps in raising public awareness on blindness and vision impairment as a major international public health issues
Helps in influencing Governments to participate and designate funds for national blindness prevention programs
Helps in educating the targeted group of people on preventable blindness and to generate support for visual health all across the globe

217 million people have severe or moderate visual impairment, 253 are blind as at 2015, good news though, blindness prevalence has dropped from 4.58% to 3.37%, irrespective of that 89% of visually impaired individuals live in developing countries with 55% of them were women.