There is no doubt whatsoever that sight is the most important sense and the eyes, the most precious external organ. This fact was brought into focus on World Sight Day (WSD) that fell on October 14.
The day is celebrated worldwide on the second Thursday of October, to create awareness on vision impairment and eye care. This was initiated by the Sight First campaign of Lions Club International Foundation (LCIF) in 2000. Later, World Sight Day became a joint initiative between the World Health Organisation (WHO) and International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness.
This year’s World Sight Day theme was “love your eyes”. That is the first step to protecting the eyes. Every year the World Sight Day has its own theme. The theme is related to improving the eye health of children and adults, prevention of blindness, offering essential services for improved eye health, what can be done to improve blurred vision, low vision, dry eye and cataract.
The eye is the most important and sensitive organ in the human body, which needs more care than the other parts of our body, but people do not pay attention or care to the symptoms of weak eyesight like red eyes, swollen eyes, itching, headache, watery or puffy eyes. Often such symptoms are ignored, resulting in the deterioration of vision gradually. Too much strain on the eyes leads to spoiled or blurred vision. It makes the eyes weak and cause issues in reading and writing. Many people may experience an eye health issue in their lifetime and more than a billion people worldwide do not have access to eye care services.
World Sight Day also seeks to improve recognition and access to care for those who need services. The aim of this day is to support people who face difficulty in seeing, reading or writing. Having a healthy diet, protecting eyes from UV rays, reducing screen time, quitting smoking and having regular eye check-ups are a few simple ways to preserve eye health.
The message here is that blindness is preventable if you look after your eyes. The leading cause of blindness in most countries is cataract - a clouding of the eye’s lens that impairs vision. It can arise so gradually that many patients are unaware that their vision is deteriorating. Other patients attribute the changes to fatigue or aging.
The reality is that cataracts are the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness and the most common cause of vision loss in people over age 40. There are more cases of cataracts than there are of glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration combined. More than 65 million people worldwide have cataracts. An estimated 17 million of the 43 million people living with blindness today across the globe are cataract blind.
Vision loss affects more than an individual’s eyes. Cataracts can have profound cognitive, psychological and social effects, diminishing an individual’s overall well-being and quality of life. Imagine not being able to do the activities that many of us take for granted every day, such as shopping for groceries, using a computer or seeing the faces of loved ones. Fortunately, cataracts can be treated fairly easily via a 15-minute local anesthesia surgery, where the cloudy lens is replaced by an artificial lens that will last a lifetime. But it is important to diagnose the condition early.
Glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration are also mostly preventable causes of sight loss. There are also some rare genetic conditions that cause blindness either at birth or later on in life. It is important for diabetics to check their eyes every six months or so in order to prevent the onset of glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. Moreover, certain hazardous jobs call for the use of protective eyewear. Eye injuries at home or workplace can lead to lasting damage or even blindness. Wearing sunglasses can also help protect the eyes and ‘computer glasses’ that can filter out harmful rays from LCD screens are also recommended if you use computers heavily.
However, there are signs that blindness could be a thing of the past in the next few decades if scientists succeed in their quest to perfect artificial vision and eyes. The human eye owes its wide field of view and high-resolution eyesight to the dome-shaped retina — an area at the back of the eyeball covered in light-detecting cells. Scientists recently used a curved aluminum oxide membrane, studded with Nano size sensors made of a light-sensitive material called Perovskite to mimic that architecture in their synthetic eyeball. The artificial eyeball registers changes in lighting faster than human eyes can — within about 30 to 40 milliseconds, rather than 40 to 150 milliseconds. The device can also see dim light about as well as the human eye. This synthetic eye could perceive a much higher resolution than the human eye, because the artificial retina contains about 460 million light sensors per square centimetre. There is a long way to go before such an apparatus can be brought off the shelf, but it will happen, bringing an end to the darkness of blindness.
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