Celebrating World Sight Day
On October 11, our NOOR Eye Care Programme took part in celebrating the 2018 World Sight Day. World Sight Day is an annual day of awareness to bring global attention to blindness and vision impairment. Established by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2000, World Sight Day is the main advocacy event for raising awareness about blindness and vision impairment for VISION 2020: The Right to Sight. WHO and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) created “The Right to Sight” as a global initiative for awareness.
This year in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Higher Education, ophthalmologist associations, and IAM’s NOOR Eye Care Programme celebrated World Sight Day. As part of this day, our NOOR Eye Care Programme had visual acuity screening at the Ministry of Public Health.
The Screening
For this visual acuity screening, we had a team of one senior ophthalmic technician and four senior ophthalmic technician students. During the screening, our team examined 96 MoPH employees – 74 men and 22 women. Following the visual acuity screening, the NOOR screening team analysed the results; as a result, they diagnosed patients with cataracts, presbyopia, 30 refractive errors, allergic conjunctiva, and Ptreguim. Because of this screening, our team was able to refer 76 patients to the NOOR Eye Hospital for further treatment.
We were thrilled to be a part of celebrating World Sight Day in Afghanistan! We are also glad to have the opportunity to partner with the Ministry of Public Health for this visual acuity screening and look forward to another year of striving towards the goals of VISION 20:20; an increased awareness of blindness and visual impairment and an Afghanistan that is free of preventable blindness.
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