There are 37 million blind people and over 124 million with low vision, comprising a total of over 161 million people with visual impairment in our world today. Every 5 seconds one person in the world goes blind, and a child goes blind every minute. 75% of all blindness is avoidable, either preventable or treatable. 90% of all avoidable blindness occurs in the developing countries. According to estimates, most blind people live in India: 9 million. 7 million live in Africa and 6 million in China.

VISION 2020: The Right to Sight is a global initiative which aims to help eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020. The main current priorities for eliminating avoidable blindness are cataract (an eye disease of ageing), causing nearly 50% of global blindness, eye infections (trachoma and onchocerciasis), visual loss in children (xerophthalmia), causing approximately 10% of blindness worldwide, refractive errors and low vision. Other potentially preventable and/or treatable causes of visual loss such as diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma can be included, on a country by country basis, as determined by the local situation. Over the next two decades, VISION 2020 will take steps to prevent an estimated 100 million people from becoming blind.

In 1999 VISION 2020 was jointly launched by the World Health Organization and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) together with more than 20 international non-governmental organisations involved in medical eye care and prevention of blindness. IAPB represents eye-care personnel - ophthalmologists, ophthalmic assistants, nurses and optometrists, international and national Non-Governmental Development Organisations (NGDO), and Ministries of Health.

Links to Partner Websites

VISION 2020 - The Right to Sight is a worldwide concerted effort to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020.
VISION 2020 concentrates on:

• Increase awareness of blindness as a major public health issue
• Control of the major causes of blindness with cost-effective interventions
• Training of eye care personnel to provide good quality eye care
• Development of infrastructure for eye care services

CBM and VISION 2020