World Sight Day 2021 Important Numbers

World Sight Day (WSD) is coordinated by the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness (IAPB). IAPB made WSD an official yearly event in 2000, and countries around the world started joining one after another contributing to this international day of awareness drawing attention to the global issue of eye health. WSD is held yearly on the second Thursday of October. This year WSD was on the 14th October 2021.

For this year’s WSD, IAPB along with the global community of eye care providers encouraged professionals and the public to think about the importance of their own eye health and how it impacts learning quality, labor outcomes, the standard and quality of living, poverty, personal development, and other aspects of wellness and sustainable development goals. This WSD, IAPB invited organizations and the public to join forces with governments, corporations, institutions, and individuals to mobilize the world, support, and ensure that everyone has access to adequate eye health. IAPB adopted the message #LoveYourEyes to make sure that everyone counts.

Various interpretations can be drawn by the many perspectives of looking to the important numbers from the AIPB Vision Atlas. As of 2020, 1.1 Billion people live with vision loss. 90% of vision loss is preventable or treatable (Steinmetz, et al. 2021). This means that 990 million people or 12.5% of the world population have preventable or treatable vision loss. This accounts for more than 3 times the population of the United States or more than the population of Europe and Russia altogether.

Even though 90% of people with vision loss live in low and middle-income countries, good eye health has a great impact on the world economy. It improves the well-being of people and the quality of education. Good eye health increases work opportunities, productivity, and is fundamental to achieving sustainable growth and development. Vision loss results in 410.7 Billion US Dollars in productivity loss annually. That is the equivalent of feeding the world population one McDonald’s Big Mac meal for nine days or buying every citizen in the state of New Mexico or Nebraska a 200K house. Moreover, it is the equivalent of buying every household in Wyoming a 1.9 Million US Dollar Bugatti Veyron.

This World Sight Day 2021, the goal of IAPB was to get 1 Million people to have their eyes tested within 100 days. By October 14, pledges accounted for 3,443,870 eye tests around the world beating the target by 344%.

References:

Steinmetz, J. D., Bourne, R. R., Briant, P. S., Flaxman, S. R., Taylor, H. R., Jonas, J. B., … & Morse, A. R. F. (2021). Causes of blindness and vision impairment in 2020 and trends over 30 years, and prevalence of avoidable blindness in relation to VISION 2020: the Right to Sight: an analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study. The Lancet Global Health, 9(2), e144-e160.