Dedicated To The Preservation of Vision
Every five seconds, one person in the world goes blind. A child goes blind every minute. There are 37 million people who are blind in the world. There are 124 million more with significant loss of vision. 75% of blindness is avoidable: either preventable or treatable. (from ICO web--but what original source? Site source here.)
Yet the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the number of blind and visually impaired will double–to 76 million by 2020–unless concerted action is taken. Ninety percent of the world's blind people live in developing countries, including close to seven million each in India and China and more than 19 million in other countries. .
As a founding member of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), the ICO participates in the IAPB’s VISION 2020 initiative, supports and enables ICO member education programs and runs their own ICO initiatives sponsored by the ICOFoundation.
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.
Read more about this topic: International Council Of Ophthalmology
Famous quotes containing the words dedicated to the, dedicated to, dedicated, preservation and/or vision:
“Individually, museums are fine institutions, dedicated to the high values of preservation, education and truth; collectively, their growth in numbers points to the imaginative death of this country.”
—Robert Hewison (b. 1943)
“Individually, museums are fine institutions, dedicated to the high values of preservation, education and truth; collectively, their growth in numbers points to the imaginative death of this country.”
—Robert Hewison (b. 1943)
“I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated Spirit.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers. The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in the world, the most rapid stenographers, could not report the news it brings.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)