What is World Sight Day?
World Sight Day, the second Thursday in October, encourages everyone to concentrate on vision health, blindness, and vision impairment.
Around the world, the day is both a call to action and a call for concern regarding vision care around the world. Vision and blindness can be reduced by disease prevention. Beyond prevention, World Sight Day aims to raise awareness and accessibility to care for those who need services.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 285 million people of all ages are visually impaired. Uncorrected refractive errors and cataracts are two of the causes of visual impairment. Unfortunately, 80% of all visual impairments are preventable. Poor people with visual impairments who are poor simply don't have the funds to buy a pair of eyeglasses. Many people are unable to afford cataract surgery or there is no one in their area to perform the procedure.
39 million people are blind. Of those with visual impairments, 39 million are blind. These are some of the most common causes of blindness.
