International Agency for Prevention of Blindness

International Agency for Prevention
of Blindness – Vision 2020

                                                                                         (24.09.2013)

        (www.iapb.org)                                          (www.vision2020india.org)

The
International Agency for Prevention of Blindness is coordinating umbrella
organisation to lead an international effort in mobilizing resources for
blindness prevention activities. It was set up in 1975 by World Blind Union and
International Council of Opthalmology. Its first achievement was to promote
establishment of WHO program for prevention of blindness with which it is
linked, which is the global initiative VISION2020: Right to Sight.

The vision
of IAPB is a world where no one is needlessly blind and where those with
unavoidable vision can achieve full potential. IAPB’s mission is to eliminate the
main causes of avoidable blindness and visual impairment by bringing together
governments and non-governmental agencies to facilitate the planning, development
and implementation of sustainable national eye care programmes based on the
three core strategies of disease control, human resource development and
infrastructure development, incorporating the principles of primary health
care. IAPB promotes the global initiative VISION 2020: The Right to Sight,
which aims to eliminate the main causes of avoidable blindness by the year
2020.

Objectives

Within the
mandate of combating avoidable blindness, the Agency has major objectives.
These are:

1. Disseminating ideas
   and information on successful approaches to eye care delivery.
2. Increasing
   public awareness of needs and solutions so that one country may be
   assisted by the experiences and resources of another.
3. Supporting the
   WHO programme and its strategies through close dialogue, mobilisation of
   resources and evaluation of activities.

Implementation

IAPB
works to encourage the formation of national prevention of blindness committees
and programmes, led by governments with input from the WHO, local and
international non-governmental organisations. These now exist in over eighty
countries.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 1994 at 5^th IAPB assembly in
Berlin, a Task Force for Prevention of Blindness was established, that created
a document between 1996 and 1998 called ‘Global Initiative for Elimination of
Avoidable Blindness’. On February 18, 1999 ‘Vision2020 : Right to Sight’ was
launched. Since the launch of VISION 2020, a
major concerted international effort is being made in areas such as advocacy, resource
mobilisation, strengthening national capacities through human resource
development, and the transfer of appropriate technologies to developing
countries. A conservative estimate of productivity gain from Vision 2020 is
$102 billion over 20 year period. In May 2003, the 56th World Health Assembly
of Ministers adopted a “Resolution on Elimination of Avoidable
Blindness”, which calls on all member states to prepare VISION 2020 plans
by 2005. Further, member states are to establish national coordinating
committees, which are to start implementing the national plans by 2007, and to
report back in 2010.