October 11, 2007	Thursday	Ramazan 28, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 10: The World Sight Day will be observed on Thursday (today).

The day aims to raise public awareness about prevention and treatment of vision loss.

The day will focus on governments’ pledges to ensure increased access to health services in relation to both prevention and treatment of eye conditions. Providing access to eye care, which reduces the magnitude of avoidable blindness, is part of the obligation under the right to the highest attainable standard of blindness and deafness programme.

Every five seconds, one person in the world goes blind, while one child loses sight every minute. It is estimated that over seven million people become visually-impaired every year. An estimated 180 million people worldwide are visually disabled. Of those, between 40 and 45 million persons are blind.—APP