THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024
This day aims at drawing attention to a wide-ringing problems surrounding visual impairment, blindness and other ocular ailments.
The World Sight Day was initially started in 1917 by the Lions Club International Foundation (LCIF), headed by Melvin Jones, as part of its Sight First campaign in 2000. It is now coordinated by the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) under the garb of the Vision 2020 mission.
It's a global initiative that tirelessly seeks to achieve the objective of ensuring that none is needlessly left visually weakened in this world. Also, its focus is on intensifying and accelerating the prevention of blindness so as to achieve its main goal of eliminating avoidable blindness.
Additionally, the campaign draws the public eye towards understanding the vitality of imbibing safe practices to prevent blindness and other vision related problems, while also providing the visually needy with medical assistance and requisite financial aid.
This year’s theme for this rather unique 'visual celebration' is ‘Love Your Eyes'. It envisages putting in extra effort to rope in more and more members of the community to spread awareness about the visual health.
The IAPB has disclosed that The World Sight Day, in the previous year, witnessed over 3.5 million eye test pledges undertaken by individuals, eye care hospitals, and renowned ophthalmologists, among others. This year, they aim to have more than five million pledges for the same cause.
As can be easily inferred from the theme, the ‘Love Your Eyes’ campaign would motivate people to give their precious eyes the attention they richly deserve and take adequate care to ensure that their visual health remains at the optimal levels at all times.
It is rather heart-breaking to know that over a billion people across the globe have visual impairment and loss of vision. And, to make it worse, they have no access to appropriate eye-care agencies. Hence, The World Sight Day 2022 intends to generate consciousness pertaining to blindness and visual damage as a key universal health concern.
This World Sight Day, global agencies working towards the betterment of visual health urges everyone to come forward and raise funds in order to make medical treatment affordable for everyone.
Hence, try and organise a fundraise and ask your near and dear ones to generously contribute towards the noble cause. It is important today to have access to proper medical care and resources and get the right treatment for any medical problem one faces, visual abnormality being one such. People must realise the gravity of the situation and do whatever they can to obtain timely ocular examination that could save them from a visual disaster.
Also, at an individual level, make it a point to educate people about visual impairment, as the research indicates that 75 per cent of blindness is preventable. Therefore, get your eyes checked regularly, regardless of the fact whether you do or do not face visual issues. Prevention is always better than cure!
Remember, we have been absolutely blessed with the gift of eyesight without which we would never have been in a position to view and admire the worldly beauty.
For a person who is otherwise visually fine, suddenly becoming visually impaired or totally losing eyesight could be an extremely traumatic experience. We often tend to take our eyesight for granted and become increasingly negligent towards it, only to realise one day its inestimable value.
The World Sight Day is a reminder for us all to take care of our vision and be grateful for it, every single day. Make sure that you don't strain your eyes too much, and give them the care that they merit so that you, in turn, can enjoy the blessed gift of vision!
Happy World Sight Day!
