World Sight Day - 2012

World Sight Day 2012 (WSD) is an international day of awareness, held annually on the second Thursday of October to focus attention on the global issue of avoidable blindness and visual impairment. This year, there is no global theme for World Sight Day 2012 (WSD12), which we hope will allow each participating organisation to use the occasion to highlight its own priority areas, in ways which will resonate with their own target audiences.


According to WHO estimates:

• About 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide:
  • 39 million are blind and
  • 246 million have low vision (severe or moderate visual impairment)
• preventable cause are as high as 80% of the total global visual impairment burden
• About 90% of the world's visually impaired people live in developing countries
• Globally, uncorrected refractive errors are the main cause of visual impairment
• Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness
• 65% of visually impaired, and 82% of blind people are over 50 years of age, although this age group comprises only 20% of the world population 

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