World Sight Day 2020: History, Importance, and Theme of the day

World Sight Day is an annual awareness day held on the second Thursday of October, to focus global attention on visual impairment and blindness. This year, World Sight Day celebrates on 8 October 2020 with the theme: Hope In Sight.

1 billion individuals around the globe have a preventable vision impairment or one that presently can’t seem to be addressed. Diminished or missing vision can have major and long-lasting impacts on all parts of life, including daily personal activities, cooperating with the community, school and work opportunities, and the ability to get to public services.

Decreased eyesight can be caused by a few factors, including diseases like diabetes and trachoma, trauma to the eyes, or conditions, for example, refractive error, cataracts, age-related macular degeneration, or glaucoma.

Most individuals with vision impairment are beyond 50 years old years; in any case, vision loss can influence individuals of all ages.

World Sight Day 2020

The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) organizes World Sight Day under the VISION 2020 Global Initiative. IAPB creates the theme and certain core materials for every year’s World Sight Day, while individuals and ally associations manage individual events.

The VISION 2020 Global Initiative is a coalition of international, non-governmental, and private associations that works together with the World Health Organization (WHO). The lofty goal of the VISION 2020 Global Initiative is to dispense with avoidable blindness as a public health problem by the year 2020, as long as sufficient resources are accessible. Working as a group, the associations related to the VISION 2020 Global Initiative additionally would like to diminish the negative impacts of visual impairment and vision loss. These negative impacts can incorporate restricted developmental, social, and economic development and a diminished quality of life.

World Sight Day History

In 1998, Lion Clubs International launched Lions World Sight Day to draw attention to the predicament of sight loss in the nations of the third world. In 2000, the IAPB upheld the activity and integrated World Sight Day into its program VISION 2020. World Sight Day has been celebrated on the second Thursday of October from that point onward. The IAPB organizes it in participation with the WHO (World Health Organization).

While 2017 is the fifth annual World Sight Day under the VISION 2020 Global Initiative at the direction of WHO and IAPB, the SightFirst Campaign of Lions Club International Foundation (LCIF) started the event in 1990.

World Sight Day targets focusing global attention on visual impairment and blindness as significant international public health problems. Events and activities held on the event center around instructing individuals about visual impairment prevention programs and creating support for VISION 2020.

LCIF is a global leader in offering help to help prevent avoidable visual impairment and restore sight for individuals living in all parts of the world. LCIF has various sight programs, including programs that help support the development and improvement of eye care systems, give resources for sight-restoring surgeries and treatments, and circulate medications to those at the highest risk for eye diseases. Through community-oriented efforts with their partners, local healthcare authorities, eye care experts, other non-governmental associations, and Lions, SightFirst have helped at least 30 million individuals have an improved or restored vision.

World Sight Day 2020 Theme

The theme of World Sight Day 2020 is “Hope In Sight”.

The VISION 2020 Global Initiative has been attempting to dispense with avoidable visual deficiency and lessen the negative impacts of vision loss. As indicated by IAPB, each four out of five cases of visual impairment are avoidable if they get satisfactory treatment. It likewise says that more than 200 million individuals experience the ill effects of moderate to extreme vision impairment which is treatable, yet there is an absence of admittance to satisfactory facilities in numerous places. “Hope in Sight” focuses on narrowing this gap of medical access to vision-related issues among individuals over the world.

Sight Day is a special annual day of awareness that is celebrated the world over every year to focus on visual impairment and blindness. This day was made by the World Health Organization as a team with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness and awareness is spread through a large number of various events.

A large number of associations around the globe have been engaged with Sight Day for many years. A few people decide to show their help by planting trees, while others get included by presenting a photo that will be used to make an international photo montage focusing on the theme of visual impairment.

Different activities that happen on this day incorporate special fundraising walks to help spread the expenses of tasks, book readings for the visually impaired, and various booklets and banners that are made to raise awareness of the issue.

On World Sight Day, media and medical or social activity associations hold different events and programs to elevate public awareness to the issue of blindness in our world. There are additionally raising support efforts and attempts to impact governments to take explicit activities.

It is traditional to plant trees, take “awareness walks,” hand out writing, or contribute photos to international photograph montages on this day. However, annual events may vary.

As indicated by statistics, about 39 million individuals worldwide are blind, and 90% of them live in low-income nations. Another 246 million are visually impaired. 80% of visual impairment can be dealt with or potentially prevented. VISION 2020 and World Sight Day were made to pass on this data and urge individuals worldwide to help visual impairment and blindness avoidance methodologies.