Dr. Preet Pal Thakur co-founder of Glamyo Health.
There are over 600 million people in this world that suffer from visionary loss or blindness mainly because of not having adequate access to quality eye examinations or ophthalmologist check-ups. This is highly unfortunate considering that 80-90% of the blindness in the world can be prevented only by one simple step of timely eye checkup. The gift of sight cannot be overemphasized, as this significantly increases the chances of living a more fulfilling and dignified life.
To make people aware of its relevancy, World Blind Day or World Sight Day is organized on 14th October worldwide. This annual day is created to raise awareness of visionary impairment or blindness in the global population. Further, it brings recognition to the work of lakhs of ophthalmologists across the world and the hard work they put into every year to help people suffering from this cruel disability.
Ever since the pandemic started, eyes have tolerated more strain than ever before. The increased usage of digital screens and people constantly missing regular eye check-ups has put a lot of negligence in their eye care routine. Hence, World Blind day has increased its significance now that people need to protect and prioritize their eyes more than before.
This annual celebration of eye care has an essential mission behind it; thereby it is a duty of all to get involved in the practice as an opportunity to help those who are affected the most by blindness.
Understanding why world blind day is essential?
It is widely known that visual impairment has affected millions of households from achieving the optimum quality of life. Eye health significantly impacts employment, education, poverty, opportunities, and many other crucial life goals one may have. Tragically, many of such visionary problems begin due to people lacking resources in their vicinities, such as lack of free eye care check-ups, expertise treatments, and lack of awareness about eye-related diseases.
To fundamentally cure the root cause of the rising disability, government or non-funded organizations encourage the public to come together on the annually celebrated world blind day to actively support those individuals to achieve the proper treatment that they lack and support universal access to eye care check-ups to ensure that the rise of eye-related problems declines.
What should people do to raise awareness about World Blind Day?
Bring social media to work its charm
In today’s time, social media platforms are the best way to popularize trends and make people aware of relevant topics. Activists and influencers alike can actively use these websites to work in their favor by creating educational videos with fun challenges, tweets, and tags to help them reach their millions of followers. Hosting contests in which people are encouraged to post their favourite view or sight on their social media will help more people become grateful for their visionary gift and make them aware of how important it is to maintain their eye health. Incentives on such trends will bring motivation and gives quicker result.
Fundraising eye check-ups
Free eye check-ups can encourage many individuals to get their eyes checked. Furthermore, other fundraising events can be held to make people pledge a donation for others who lack such resources as eye check-ups or glasses. Optometry companies can invite staff and patients to pledge however much they like throughout October.
Simply spreading pamphlets or infographics can give a good explanation of the cause as well. As a bonus, they can also get to publicize their donations on social media.
Conclusion
In the end, questions as such are ideal and must be addressed by experts in front of the unaware audience to cure the ignorance that many have regarding the importance of timely eye checkups, eye care and health treatments. World blind day is the ideal time to give people knowledge and prevent a significant blindness and get help for those who suffer the most due to visual impairment.
Also Read: #PreventionOfBlindnessWeek: Is Blindness A Genetic Disorder?