Love Your Eyes
World Sight Day 2021
Nearly everyone on the planet will experience an eye health issue in their lifetime and more than a billion people worldwide do not have access to eye care services. To address the bigger picture at the country and global level, we need to be aware of our own eye health, and so the World Sight Day theme for 2021 is all about #LoveYourEyes.
The four Ps to Love Your Eye:
Prevent
Many eye diseases can be prevented by adopting a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle is all about eating healthy and adopting healthy habits. Eating a healthy balanced diet is often the crucial step in maintaining a healthy weight, controlling obesity, and preventing diseases such as Diabetes, all of which can impact eye health.
Protect
While leading a healthy lifestyle can help you prevent several eye diseases it is equally important to protect and take care of your eyes.
The risk ranges from severe sunlight, workplace accidents to prolonged exposure to screens at homes. It is important to protect our eyes from harmful radiations like the Ultraviolet rays emitted by the sun. Using good quality sunglasses is the simplest step we can take towards protecting our eyes from such harmful radiations when we step out of the house.
Preserve
To preserve your vision, plan for, and get, a regular comprehensive eye examination. A comprehensive eye examination will ensure that your eyecare practitioner obtains a detailed medical history and family history to understand your risk factors, followed by checking your vision, eye power, and eye health by instilling dilating eye drops.
Prioritise
Ensure that eye examinations are a part of your routine medical examination and prioritize your eye health and consider “Love your eyes” as a life’s mission and also educate your family, loved ones and community regarding the importance of eyes and vision
World Sight Day (WSD) is co-ordinated by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB). World Sight Day became an official IAPB event in the year 2000, and has been marked in many different ways in countries around the world each year since then.
World Sight Day is supported by over 150 IAPB member organisations, which include every major eye care NGO in the world, apex professional bodies for ophthalmology and optometry, teaching hospitals and corporations, united in working together to eliminate avoidable blindness and visual impairment.