World Sight Day >>Wsd-06 Media Calendar Notice

World Sight Day, 12th October 2006

World Sight Day 2006 will take place on Thursday 12th October, focusing attention on the global problem of avoidable blindness – ‘every 5 seconds one person in our world goes blind and a child goes blind every minute’. 

This year’s World Sight Day (WSD) theme is Low Vision and Refractive Error, pointing to the fact that 124 million people in the world have low vision or serious visual impairment, and that many millions more are functionally blind due to uncorrected refractive error. While most of these cases cannot be prevented or cured medically, much can be done to improve life opportunities and to save them from effectively living ‘blind’. The VISION 2020 global initiative aims to ensure that low vision and refractive services are made available to all.

World Sight Day is coordinated by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness as part of the VISION 2020: the Right to Sight campaign. World Sight Day is supported around the world by organisations including UN agencies, governments, non-governmental organisations, eye care organisations, hospitals, clinics and health professionals, philanthropic institutions and individuals working together in a global partnership to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020. For further information please visit www.v2020.org or contact: 

or    Abi Smith, Communications Manager, IAPB (London):
communications@v2020.org/ + 44 (0) 207 927 2974

Note to Editor
VISION 2020: The Right to Sight is a global initiative of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and the World Health Organization (WHO), with an international coalition of Non-Governmental Organisations.  VISION 2020 aims to eliminate unnecessary blindness in order to give all people in the world, particularly the millions of needlessly blind, The Right to Sight.