World Sight Day
Having been born with a form of albinism that means my eyesight is around 8% that of a fully sighted person, being visually impaired is just part of my everyday life.
After 30 odd years I have overcome most of the ‘small’ things that can be an inconvenience. I say most as there are some things you just can’t do anything about, such as driving.
Having been born this way I have no idea what it’s like to look at life any other way, which in some respects makes it much easier for me to deal with.
People who have been fortunate enough to have good vision then loose it can find it mentally challenging to come to terms with such a loss.
To be honest I just don’t get that. They can become full of doom and gloom as if their world has ended, at times feeling sorry for themselves and making life tough for those close to them.
Throughout it all they forget one very important thing – up until they lost some or all of their sight they had years of seeing and looking at the world with good eyesight.
Some people, including myself, will never have that privilege – and no I’m not looking for sympathy, I don’t need nor want it. I appreciate the offer but there are plenty of others in the world more in need of it than me who are less fortunate with disabilities and problems far worse than mine.
For those of you with normal eyesight, blindness is one of the easiest disabilities to experience.
Simply blindfold yourself, no cheating now, and go make yourself a coffee. Mmm, on second thoughts maybe that’s a bad suggestion as it involves boiling hot water and you’re likely to do yourself an injury.
How about you fetch a glass of water? Just be careful not to smash the glass and cut yourself. 
So what is World Sight Day? It is an annual day of awareness held on the second Thursday of October, to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment.
145 million people’s low vision is due to uncorrected refractive errors (near-sightedness, far-sightedness or astigmatism). In most cases, normal vision could be restored with eyeglasses or a simple surgical procedure.
Sadly, 90% of blind and visually impaired people live in low-income countries meaning simple procedures and medical expertise to restore and correct their sight aren’t financially within their means.
On World Sight Day, VISION 2020 members work together to try to influence Governments / Ministers of Health to participate in and designate funds for national blindness prevention programmes and educate target audiences about blindness prevention and to generate support for VISION 2020 programme activities.
Posted on October 8, 2009 | Filed Under Life
Leave a Reply
