The world observes global sight day on the second Thursday of October, aiming to create awareness about eye impairment including blindness and also to emphasize the importance of good eye care.
According to a World Health Organization report, almost 2.2 billion people around the world i.e. one a quarter of the world are affected by visual impairment but most of the cases could have been avoided. The primary goal of World Sight Day is to raise awareness about the causes of vision impairment so that it can be avoided.
The World Health Organization’s World Report on Vision and the United Nations Resolution on Vision has also established eye health as essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
For World Sight Day 2022, the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IABP) has decided to keep the hashtag “#LoveYourEyes.”
The ‘Love Your Eyes’ campaign encourages people to prioritize their eye health while advocating for internationally accessible, fairly priced, and widely available eye care.
As per the sight savers report, if proper precautions are not taken, the number of blind people could reach 115 million by 2050.
This concept of “sight first” was initially started by the Lions Club International Foundation as part of money raising campaign for visually impaired people in the year 2000 and now over a billion people have benefited from this initiative worldwide.
