World Sight Day – this year on October 12th
World Sight Day is held every year on the second Thursday in October. The day is observed worldwide to raise awareness of blindness and visual impairments as major international public health issues and to highlight the importance of good eye care.
The world's population is aging, and people are living longer. With this also comes increased age-related vision problems that can lead to blindness, such as cataracts, macular degeneration, and glaucoma. Some conditions can be treated or cured, and timely eye care can often delay or reduce the effects of diseases on vision. This is crucial for the patients' perceived quality of life as vision is often stated as our most dominant sense. In 2020, the number of people who are visually impaired worldwide was estimated at 596 million, and the number of people who are blind was 43 million. The projection for 2050 is 895 million visually impaired and 61 million blind people on the planet. * This further shows how important it is to provide necessary eye care for an ever-larger group of people and thus the importance of spreading the word on World Sight Day!
LVI Low Vision International develops, produces and sells vision aids. On our website you can read more about LVI and our range of vision aids.
*Burton et al, The Lancet Global Health, 2021, The Lancet, 9th 489-551.
