World sight day is celebrated every year on the second Thursday of October. This year, it's on 14 October. World sight day is celebrated to raise awareness about the conditions of blindness, sight impairment, vision care and eyesight problems.

According to the WHO, there are 1 billion people who are affected by near or distant vision impairment due to late diagnosis and treatment. It can affect people from any age group, but it is more common among older people of 50 years or more.

Blindness or vision impairment affects may act as a barrier in their daily life, career and personal opportunities, and even while travelling.

The few causes of vision impairment are unoperated cataract, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, eye infections, trauma and other age-related macular degeneration. It is important that people become more aware of these causes.

World Sight day was started for the same reason which is celebrated with a new theme every year.

World sight day was first started by the Lions Club Foundation which had partnered with the blindness prevention organisations across the world. It was first celebrated in the year 1984 on 8 October.

Later, the IABP coordinated, recognised it as the VISION 2020 and it became the joint program headed by the WHO and IABP members in which non-goverment organisations, eye care associations, eye hospitals could participate and raise awareness around these issues from any part of the world.

The Lions Club Foundation, WHO, and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness have been working since years to celebrate this day and seek help from the government and health ministry to work on the development of eye care organisations and help in organising funds.

It was in 1990 that the world was witnessing a rise in the vision impairment cases and because of this TLCIF decided to organise a FirstSight campaign to raise awareness.

Now, there are international foundations which bring together the efforts of various eye care societies and hospitals so that people know about the causes and symptoms of eye related problems.

The celebration of the day also ensures that more organisations can be brought together for timely diagnosis and treatment before a person loses one's eyesight.

The theme for the year is 'love your eyes'. This theme emphasises the need to take care of our eyes.

This theme also reminds us to be grateful for it. The more grateful we shall be, the more careful we will be. We can include foods that help keeping the eyes healthy and go for regular eye check ups for timely diagnosis or treatment.

According to WHO, the member countries in the 74th world health assembly decided on two targets that shall be achieved by 2030- 40 percent increase in effective coverage of refractive errors and 30 percent increase in effective cataract surgeries. This shall take us towards better global eye care systems.