World Sight Day: "Children, Love Your Eyes"

Join World Sight Day 2024 on October 10th to raise awareness about child eye health. Discover Sightsavers' impactful initiatives in providing eye care services

Highlights:

Sightsavers help prevent blindness and supports people with vision loss
They provide eye health services in rural areas, urban slums, and for truck drivers
Sightsavers helps visually impaired children in schools and works to empower people with disabilities

World Sight Day, 10 October 2024, is a campaign celebrated annually to raise awareness among individuals, families, and communities on child eye health. Various organizations and individuals join together and support eye health.

It is a platform to influence people to prioritize eye health and an opportunity to grab the world’s attention on eye care. World Sight Day is coordinated and directed by IAPB (The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness).

World Sight Day 2024’s theme is, “Children, Love Your Eyes" prioritizing children’s eye health ().

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‘Did You Know?
About 2.2 billion people are visually impaired globally. #eyecare #eyehealth #medindia’

Sightsavers’ Global Vision Care

Sightsavers () is a global development organization that has been working for the wellness of people with good eye health and to eliminate avoidable blindness. They ensure that people who have permanent vision loss are supported with all the requirements being fulfilled and lead lives of independence and dignity.

Over the five decades, Sightsavers have carried out 36.4 million eye treatments and performed 5 million eye operations along with the support of their partners in developing countries. Their work has significantly impacted the lives of 55 million people with eye problems.

With a vision of a world where no one is blind and visually impaired people should be treated equally in society, they have established their social work in 100 districts across 8 states of India. They are determined to provide visually impaired people with educational support, counseling, training, and leadership development.

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Sightsavers: Rural Eye Health Initiative

A large population of our country lives in rural areas and these people are limited to cataract screening with limited or no attention given to other eye problems. The Rural Eye Health (REH) Programme, an initiative by Sightsavers is aimed to create awareness, provide quality eye health services, and eliminate blindness among the rural population.

Sightsavers have six important interventions to extend their service to the rural poor people. They are involved in screening for common blinding eye disease, refraction and spectacle provision, referral to higher levels, high-quality cataract surgeries, capacity building of the health workforce, and integration with wider health systems.

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Urban Eye Care for the Poor

Though people living in urban areas can get all the medical support, a large number of poor people living in urban slums of India do not receive any health, education, or livelihood support. With Sightsavers’ Urban Eye Health (UEH) programme, they ensure comprehensive and sustainable eye health mechanisms for the urban slums of India.

They are supported by the Ministry of Health and the National Urban Health Mission to create quality access to eye health for poor people. Their interventions include cost-effective screening for diabetic retinopathy , equitable spectacle dispensing, community demand generation, sensitization of health workers, and effective linkage with eye health providers.

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Eye Care for Truckers and Inclusive Education for children

RAAHI is a flagship programme of Sightsavers. It is an initiative to help truck drivers who can’t get eye care services. Because eye health is important for the overworked truckers’ community to ensure road safety.

Children with vision disability are now registered in schools with government effort along with the NGOs. However, there is a challenge of not having enough resource teachers and other facilities which might affect the learning outcome of visually impaired children.

Sightsavers aims to promote a positive and enabling environment in schools with the Inclusive Education Programme. Children are provided with assistive devices and accessible educational material, provision of compensatory skills training, infrastructure accessibility and building education management, and leadership among others.

The government has provided various schemes for the benefit of people with disability, but due to lack of awareness and administrative negligence, poor people are unable to get those benefits. To address this issue, Sightsavers made the Social Inclusion Programme for people with disabilities. They focus on economic empowerment, strengthening disabled people’s organizations (DPOs), and creating an enabling environment.

References:

World Sight Day 2024 to Prioritise Child Eye Health - (https://www.iapb.org/news/world-sight-day-2024-to-prioritise-child-eye-health/)
World Sight Day is an annual event to raise awareness of blindness and the importance of eye care - (https://www.sightsavers.org/world-sight-day/)

Source-Medindia