Eye Care Everywhere

World Sight Day

Today marks the 19th year for World Sight Day and this year’s theme is ‘Eye Care Everywhere’. Today aims to raise awareness of sight loss but more specifically getting the care you need to prevent or support those with sight loss.

For the past 3 years, Traveleyes have been supporting the amazing work by Sightsavers, a brilliant organisation that works in more than 30 countries worldwide, with a focus on Africa and Asia.

Sightsavers work to prevent sight loss and avoidable blindness in some of the poorest parts of the world. They distribute treatments to prevent disease, carry out operations and eye examinations, advocate for disability rights and strengthen health systems to create sustainable development projects.

In 2015, Traveleyes visited Sightsavers HQ in Ghana. In 1990 over 5.6% of Ghana’s population (14.5M) were living with sight loss. As a comparison, only 1.2% of the Netherlands population were living with sight loss (14.9M). Due to the remarkable work carried out by Sightsavers and other worldwide organisations, in 2015, those living with sight loss in Ghana had decreased to 4.1% of a now 27.5M population which is a decrease of 1.5%.

In the world, 157.7 million people are at risk to an infectious cause of blindness known as Trachoma. This debilitating disease is caused by a contagious bacterial infection of the eye, not to dissimilar to conjunctivitis. Without antibiotic treatment, Trachoma causes irreversible blindness and is extremely painful. As of 2018 Ghana is one of only 8 countries to have eradicated the disease but the World Health Organisation has determined 43 other countries that require interventions to eliminate Trachoma as a public health problem.

Over the coming weeks, we will be sharing with you different ways to support the amazing work Sightsavers are doing so together, we can eradicate this disease.

To find out more about Sightsavers visit – https://www.sightsavers.org/