World Sight Day 2012

World Sight Day 

11 October 2012 

Today (11 Oct) is World Sight Day - an annual day of awareness to focus global attention on blindness, visual impairment and rehabilitation of the visually impaired held on the second Thursday in October.

World Sight Day is observed around the world by all partners involved in preventing visual impairment or restoring sight. It is also the main advocacy event for the prevention of blindness and for "Vision 2020: The Right to Sight", a global effort to prevent blindness created by WHO and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness.

Global Key Messages 

• About 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide:
• 39 million are blind and
• 246 million have low vision (severe or moderate visual impairment)
• preventable cause are as high as 80% of the total global visual impairment burden
• About 90% of the world's visually impaired people live in developing countries
• Globally, uncorrected refractive errors are the main cause of visual impairment
• Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness
• 65% of visually impaired, and 82% of blind people are over 50 years of age, although this age group comprises only 20% of the world population 
• Globally, uncorrected refractive errors are the main cause of visual impairment but in middle and low-income countries cataracts remain the leading cause
• The number of people visually impaired from infectious diseases has greatly reduced in the last 20 years

There is no global theme for WSD12, which will allow each participating organisation to use the occasion to highlight its own priority areas, in ways which will resonate with their own target audiences. 

New Delhi is hosting ‘Wide Eye Open’ exhibition of photographs taken by visually impaired persons who were trained under ‘Blind With Camera’ project by Mr Partho Bhowmick. The exhibition will last till 18th October from 11 am to 8 pm at Alliance Francaise de Delhi.