Children’s eye health will take centre stage on Thursday 10 October, as World Sight Day returns to draw the attention of the public and global leaders to the topic of eye care for young people.
The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), which coordinates the annual event, has launched a set of activities for practices, patients, and charities to engage with World Sight Day.
This includes the introduction of a new mascot for the Love Your Eyes campaign to encourage children to protect their eye health.
In the approach to World Sight Day, OT met with Caroline Casey, president of the IAPB, to find out more about the purpose of the awareness event and ways practices can get involved.
Eye care for children
A core aim of the IAPB is to see affordable and accessible eye health available for everybody in the world by 2030.
World Sight Day is an opportunity to “galvanise the world’s attention to ensure that we can get eye health to every person on the planet,” Casey said. This year takes a particular focus on children’s eye health.
The IAPB highlighted that 450 million children have a sight condition that requires treatment, but many are unable to access affordable, available eye care.
“We also know that if a child does not have access to glasses in lower- and middle-income countries, they are two to five times less likely to get into a classroom,” Casey explained.
She added: “I think people forget that the potential of a child’s life and their dreams can be stopped by not having accessible or affordable eye health.”
I think people forget that the potential of a child’s life and their dreams can be stopped by not having accessible or affordable eye health
The IAPB has established several initiatives to capture the imagination of children when it comes to the topic of eye health. This includes encouraging screening for children at schools or community centres.
Casey said: “If you don’t have eye tests, you don’t know what is wrong, and you don’t know how you can fix it.”
For optometrists, the key action is to encourage the community to book their eye tests, and to support this, the IAPB has launched a competition which invites children to design a pair of glasses of the future.
The competition is divided into two age categories: one for those aged under five, and another for children between the ages of six and 12.
The competition is open until 20 October and winners will be announced on 20 November. The winning entrants will receive a cash prize for their school.
“There is nothing better than a child creating a pair of glasses that makes them feel cool,” Casey said.
Highlighting the importance of access to eye care, she shared: “I can’t imagine how many leaders of companies or countries in the world wear glasses. If they hadn’t had access to those glasses, would they be in those positions of power? I can’t imagine they would.”
Ensuring children have access to eye tests means they can be supported to see at the best level, “so they can live their very best life,” Casey said.
There is nothing better than a child creating a pair of glasses that makes them feel cool
A personal reflection on World Sight Day
“I have done a huge amount in my life. I am incredibly lucky,” Casey told OT.
Diagnosed with ocular albinism as a six-month-old, Casey was brought up as a sighted child and did not learn of her eye health condition until she was a young adult.
“I arrived at the age of 17 dying to drive cars and race motorbikes and I discovered I absolutely was not going to be doing that,” she said, continuing: “I didn’t understand why or how I had got through to 17 without knowing, and so I hid my sight loss for 11 years.”
At 28 years old, when working for a global management consultancy, Casey discussed her sight for the first time.
Reflecting on the work of the IAPB around World Sight Day, she shared: “It’s really personal to me. World Sight Day reminds me of how lucky I am because I feel that when I was not talking about my sight and my disability, I was suppressing part of who I was and not able to be the person that I am.”
It is estimated that 40% of children are blind from eye conditions that could have been prevented or managed.
Casey emphasised: “The idea that any child would have their dreams, or their future, or their potential squashed because they don’t have access to eye health… that any child is going around needlessly blind, is just not acceptable.”
Every individual action we do in loving our eyes – whether you are an optometrist, patient, kid, or employer – they all add up to ending avoidable blindness
Action: at scale and individual
“This isn’t just an issue of our eyes, or a medical issue, it is an issue of the potential of the eight billion people who live on this planet,” she continued. “The idea that we have anybody who is unnecessarily blind, when we have a solution, is absolutely crazy.”
The IAPB is seeking to put eye health into the minds of leaders to ensure it is part of primary healthcare systems and available for everyone.
“Scale can only happen when we have a very singular and focused idea that everybody can connect and relate to,” Casey said.
Rather than focusing on the problem, the solution requires everybody to take action.
“Every individual action we do in loving our eyes – whether you are an optometrist, patient, kid, or employer – they all add up to ending avoidable blindness,” she said, concluding: “I think we need to love our eyes, together, and that’s how we’ll end this.”
The IAPB is encouraging practices to get involved in the World Sight Day Love Your Eyes campaign. Resources can be found on the IAPB website, along with details for the Glasses of the Future competition.
Getting involved in World Sight Day? Let Optometry Today know by tagging us on social media, or sending us an email.
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