World Sight Day >>Wsd-06 Goals & Messages

World Sight Day, 12th October 2006

GOALS AND KEY MESSAGES FOR WSD06

On World Sight Day, VISION 2020 members work together to:

• Raise public awareness of blindness as a major international public health issue
• Raise public and professional awareness of low vision and refractive error as public health issues, and of the fact that people with these conditions can be helped by the provision of low vision devices and services, eye examinations and spectacles.
• Influence Governments/Ministers of Health in developing countries to participate in and designate funds for national blindness prevention programs
• To educate target audiences about blindness prevention, about VISION 2020 and its activities, and to generate support for program activities of member organizations

INTERNATIONAL KEY MESSAGES

• WORLD SIGHT DAY IS DESIGNED TO RECOGNISE THE AIMS OF VISION 2020
• 37 MILLION PEOPLE ARE BLIND
• 75% OF BLINDNESS IS AVOIDABLE – either by prevention or treatment
• THE HUMANITARIAN ISSUE – 100 million men, women and children will be saved from going blind, and from the poverty and social exclusion blindness can bring, by the successful implementation of VISION 2020
• THE ECONOMIC FACTOR – An estimated US$223 billion will be saved by the successful implementation of VISION 2020 (WHO: State of the World’s Sight, 2005)
• VISION 2020: The Right to Sight is a collaboration between the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness and the World Health Organization, with an international coalition of government agencies, institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations, which aims to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020
• On World Sight Day organizations worldwide work together to raise awareness of the global movement for the prevention of avoidable blindness
• 90% of blind people live in developing countries
• Every 5 seconds a person in our world goes blind and a child goes blind every minute
• White Cane Day, the international awareness-raising day for the World Blind Union, on 15th October, and supporters are encouraged to mark both  occasions

WSD06 THEMATIC MESSAGES

• The theme of WSD06 is Low Vision and Refractive Error, recognizing the fact that 124million people have low vision and millions more are functionally blind because they have no access to spectacles
• 124 MILLION PEOPLE HAVE LOW VISION – and an estimated 76 million people  who cannot be cured could benefit from low vision devices and services
• People with low vision in the majority of cases cannot be medically cured but can be helped with devices and services, and can do more visually than is often assumed
• EVEN MORE PEOPLE HAVE UNCORRECTED REFRACTIVE ERROR – millions of adults and children are functionally blind simply because they need spectacles
• Without optical care, millions of children are excluded from normal education and adults from productive working lives, with severe economic and social repercussions

AUDIENCES

STRATEGIES

• Strengthening the global coalition through cooperative PR activities
• Awareness-raising activities by individual organizations
• Promoting VISION 2020 in donor countries to support fundraising
• Promoting public engagement with VISION 2020 by Health Ministries and professionals in countries where need is greatest