World Sight Day “Love Your Eyes.”
Annually and globally, World Sight Day is celebrated every second Thursday of October, this year, World Sight Day takes place on October 13.
The day is set aside to raise awareness and offer support to organizations working together to combat avoidable visual-impairments.
It is an important day that focuses on advocating and communicating about eye health and taking care of our eyesight. Awareness is needed to let the public know of vision care and ocular issues.
The theme for this year’s World Sight Day is “Love Your Eyes.” It also goes by “World Eye Day” or “World Vision Day.”
Love your eyes campaign is aimed at promoting individual self-eye care while fighting for readily available eye care globally.
Statistically, 2.2 billion people have near or distant visual impairments. This shows that it is imperative to commemorate this day by recognizing the challenges that people face to get eye care as well as to prevent visual impairments.
Eye healthcare needs to be improved to make it more accessible, inclusive, and affordable to all.
Visual impairments can affect a person’s day-to-day life and their prospects of employment, personal life, relationships, and even traveling.
Kenya has 160 consultant ophthalmologists and 400 optometry technologists. There are 176 co-cataract surgeons.
Over 58 percent of ophthalmologists are based in the capital while 55 percent of them are stationed at public hospitals.
To celebrate World Sight Day, The Helping Hand For Relief And Development Africa is conducting a free eye camp in Kajiado.
Direct Line has partnered with Kenya Association of Opticians and Norvatis to conduct three days of screening for PSV drivers.
Billionaire philanthropist and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott has donated 15 million dollars to a social enterprise that assists in provision of glasses to farmers in developing countries.
MacKenzie’s donation is presumed to be the largest private donation to VisionSpring to help solve uncorrected blurry vision that renders millions poor.
The donation had targeted low-income tea, coffee, cocoa and artisan workers in India, Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda.
This World Sight Day, make sure to love your eyes and take care of them. Eye sight is light to life.
BY CHRISTINE OMONDI
Tags: Signstv World Sight Day The Helping Hand For Relief And Development Africa Kenya Association Of Opticians Norvatis
