Mission
IAPB aspires to link professional bodies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), educational institutions, and interested individuals, with national programmes for the prevention of blindness.
According to the WHO, more than 161 million people were visually impaired, of whom 124 million people had low vision and 37 million were blind all over the world in 2002 . It has been estimated that the number of blind people will rise to 76 million by 2020. Close to 75% of this blindness is avoidable. The treatment of cataracts, which accounts for nearly half of all blindness, is one of the most cost-effective health interventions known.
In their study on the magnitude and cost of global blindness, Frick and Foster calculate that successful implementation of VISION 2020 would lead to the prevention of 429 blind-person years (defined as "one year of blindness for an individual"). This will have a dramatic effect on the lives of millions of people — those with blindness, as well as their caregivers.
The first major achievement of IAPB was the establishment of the WHO Programme for Prevention of Blindness (WHO/PBL), with which, it then entered into an official relationship.
Read more about this topic: International Agency For The Prevention Of Blindness
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“It is the mission of the twentieth century to elucidate the irrational.”
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907–1961)