Vision 2020

People do not go blind by the millions, they go blind one by one, in families and communities, each with his own predicament. (Sir John Wilson, Founder, International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness).

Around the world, statistics has shown that around every 5 second an individual losses his or her sight and that in every minute a child somewhere out there is loses his or her vision. Annually, about 7 million people are recorded to go blind. According to the Global Vision Impairment Data 2015, 36 million have lost their vision, 217 million are severely visually impaired and 253 million people are visually impaired. 1.4 million children are known to be blind and 124 million people are known to suffer from low vision. A greater portion of this number around 90% live in developing countries such as Ghana. An estimated 3x increase in these numbers were expected to hit globally by the year 2020 and this lead to the birth Vision 2020.

Visual Impairment is a major cause and consequences of unnecessary human suffering, often leading to poverty, unemployment, ill health, social exclusion and early death. (IAPB)

Whereas the cost of visual impairment on states globally was estimated at 3 trillion dollars in the year 2010 or which 2.3 trillion dollars were direct health costs, the global productivity loss which administration hardly consider was between 269 to 428 billion dollars and even this was only due to uncorrected refractive errors; the most common cost of preventable blindness among all the causes with a leading percentage of 49% followed by cataract with a 25 percentage.

Vision 2020 was launched by the World Health Organisation in the year 1995 as a global initiative to eliminate preventable blindness. Vision 2020 talks about the right to sight as we all are entreated to have. Since the implementation of the campaign there has been an improvement in the statistical data, since the year 1990 and 2015 the prevalence of visual impairment has reduced by 1.2% which may not seem like a very substantial number however considering the number we can a lot of sights have been saved via this campaign and lots continue to benefit from this campaign.

@bettervision's contribution

Visual Healthcare practitioners all around the world form part of a great team that are working tirelessly to help curb the canker of visual impairment and blindness and @bettervision is has decided to take on the mantle of primary eye care practice of reaching out to the people in the rural and highly deprived communities. We all have a part to play, whiles ours may be going out there to render services, yours is to propagate the message, tell a friend to tell a friend that their visual healthcare is of great importance equally as their general well being or health and as such should visit the nearest eye care facility for regular checkups. The input of the majority is still needed to help push this agenda. Vision 2020 seeks to eliminate avoidable blindness and visual impairment by the year 2020. Another way you can help is to support us @bettervision to be able to reach the larger population in the deprived states. We are grateful to our supporter and backers who have been with us since the beginning and continue to stand by us. To y'all we say Ayekoo and thank you, for those who are new to @bettervision we welcome you to join the eye care family and support us for us to support others.

We are also grateful to steemstem for their continuous support for our health articles, the larger the population that reads, the more the message is propagated.

What is @bettervision about?

@bettervision is is a project initiated by @nattybongo and friends to give back to the society the knowledge and skill acquired through the Optometric Studies in Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana.It is an outreach system where we visit the less privileged communities to offer free eye screening services and education to the people within the community

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
To reduce or prevent vision loss through diseases such as glaucoma, cataract and refractive errors.

To enlighten the majority of the Ghanaian population about the importance of proper visual care.

To conscientize people on the need for regular eye checks

To get more people to have their wards screened within the Critical periods of a Child’s Vision Development; thus from ages 3 to till about 10 years.

To help the blind and people with low vision live a better life within the society through education of the general public to stop stigmatization.

To help in the fight of extreme poverty that puts the health of people at risk

Our greatest gratitude goes to @fundition @adollaraday @surfyogi @girlsfoundation @bleepcoin @ackza @indigoocean @nanzo-scoop @steemstem @demotruk @pennsif @steem-ambassador @kasho and @wafrica for helping to make the aims and objectives of @bettervision a reality.