World Sight Day in Vietnam

World Sight Day is an annual day of awareness to focus global attention on blindness, visual impairment and rehabilitation of the visually impaired held on the second Thursday in October.

This year’s World Sight Day entitled “Bright Sight for Children” was held at Hanoi Eye Hospital (HEH) on October 4.

Present at the meeting were General Director of Standard Charter Bank (SCB) in Vietnam Louis Taylor, Head of the British Embassy’s UK Trade and Industry Piers Craven, Director of the Hanoi Department of Health Le Anh Tuan, Fred Hollows Foundation (FHF) country director Huynh Tan Phuc, representatives from British Council, eye doctors and many patients.

World Sight Day is the main advocacy event for the prevention of blindness and for "Vision 2020: The Right to Sight", a global effort to prevent blindness created by the WHO and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness.

This is the ninth time Vietnam has celebrated the event. A wide range of activities included a meeting, an exhibition on blindness prevention project, screening cartoons to educate children on eye care, providing free books and DVD for children and gifts for pupils at Nguyen Dinh Chieu School.

CEO of SCB in Vietnam Louis Taylor said through the Fred Hollow Foundation SCB’s project “seeing is believing” is being carried out effectively in Vietnam. It has helped recover eye sight for 7,162 people, provided eye care services for 481,625 people and 2,000 glasses and educated 801,570 people on eye care and blindness prevention. He expressed his hope that the project will provide sustainable eye care services for Vietnam.

Director of the Hanoi Eye Hospital Vu Thi Thanh said Vietnam now has around 2 million blind people, including 32,000 ones in Hanoi, accounting for 0.5 percent of Hanoi population. Noteworthy, 30-35 percent of Hanoi pupils affected with refraction diseases.

In response to the event, the hospital has planned to provide free eye check-ups and surgery for children under 15.

HEH, SCB and FHF wished to receive coordination from mass media across the country to disseminate information and raising people’s awareness of eye care and protection and blindness prevention.