World Sight Day, #StrongerTogether

Barcelona played host last Saturday to the official ceremony in Spain to mark World Sight Day 2016. Visión España, the University of Barcelona and the Networking Biomedical Research Centre Network (CIBERER) organised the conference “Progressing towards new therapies: current challenges for patients” in the Main Hall of the Faculty of Biology. The subjects addressed during the morning included the use of gene therapy in retinal dystrophies or the functions and challenges of patients’ associations.

On World Sight Day, which is celebrated on Thursday, 13 October, the Macula Retina Association will hold in Seville an eye screening session for at-risk population groups: the over-50s, diabetics and those with a history of serious eye problems. The Association has registered this in the generic campaign “STOP Blindness/Prevent preventable blindness”.

The global campaign, organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO), maintains the 2014-2019 slogan “Universal eye health”, and disseminates the message through the call “Stronger Together”. World Sight Day gives the WHO an opportunity to stress the fact that around 285 million people in the world suffer from low vision and blindness and that some 19 million children are visually disabled. The WHO also reminds us that the growth in the older population in many countries means that there are more people at risk of suffering age-related visual degeneration.