World Sight Day (WSD) is an annual day of awareness held on the second Thursday of October each year.  WSD aims to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment.  The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) members work together to raise public awareness of blindness and vision impairment, influence governments to participate and designate funds for national blindness prevention funds, and to educate target audiences about blindness prevention.  World Sight Day 2019 takes place on October 10^th. This year’s theme and call to action is “Vision First!”.  

Of all the people suffering from blindness or poor vision, more than a billion people suffer because they do not have access to proper eye care.  This year’s mission urges everyone to find solutions to ensure that everyone, everywhere has access to proper eye care.

Continued studies conducted by the IAPB have concluded that 80% of eyes can be saved from blindness, given the proper comprehensive care and diagnosis. Additional facts from these studies include

• 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide: 39 million are blind and 246 million have low vision.
• About 90% of the world’s visually impaired live in low-income settings.
• 80% of all visual impairment can be prevented or cured.
• An estimated 19 million children are visually impaired. Of these, 12 million children are visually impaired due to a condition that could be easily diagnosed and corrected.
• The global economic cost of lost work productivity due to people with poor vision has been estimated at 700 billion dollars a year.
• 6 out of 10 people in the developed world wear glasses, contact lenses, or have had corrective eye surgery.  6 out of 10 people in the developing world are also vision impaired but have little or no access to eye care or eyeglasses.

As ambassadors of eye health, Optos would like to encourage you, eye care practitioners to participate in World Sight Day by reminding their patients to maintain a regular schedule for comprehensive eye exams including optomap®.  optomap is the only ultra-widefield (UWF™) retinal image that can capture vortex ampullae in all four quadrants in a single-capture UWF image in less than ½ second.

With the ability to view up to 200 degrees of the retina eye care professionals may be able to diagnose eye pathologies earlier than with other imaging systems, contributing to greater success in preventable vision loss and blindness. View our ultra-widefield imaging devices and contact us to learn how we can help your practice.