World Sight Day 2025 highlights urgent need for better eye health coverage

World Sight Day 2025 draws attention to vision impairment and global eye health goals

World Sight Day is the official name for the global event held on the second Thursday of October every year. On 9 October 2025, campaigners worldwide, including WHO and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), emphasize the importance of maintaining healthy vision and increasing access to eye care.

Globally, at least 2.2 billion people have some form of vision impairment, and at least 1 billion of these cases could have been prevented or are yet to be treated. The leading causes of vision impairment and blindness are refractive errors and cataracts.

Recent progress and persisting challenges

In the African Region, significant strides have been made in reducing vision loss owing to conditions like vitamin A deficiency, onchocerciasis, and trachoma. However, as populations age and noncommunicable diseases increase, new threats to eye health are emerging including inadequate awareness of eye care, unhealthy lifestyles, environmental risks, and low coverage of essential services.

Effective global initiatives include VISION 2020: The Right to Sight, which focused on eliminating avoidable blindness, particularly from cataracts, with sustainable and cost-effective services. Also, in 2021, the World Health Assembly’s decision WHA74(12) set targets for by 2030 increasing coverage of refractive error interventions by 40 percentage points and cataract surgery by 30 percentage points. WHO’s SPECS 2030 initiative, launched in June 2024, aims to ensure quality, affordable, people-centred care for those in need of refractive error services.

Gaps in coverage and policy

Despite progress, important gaps remain: fewer than a third of affected people globally receive effective refractive error correction or cataract surgery. Many countries lack a national policy specifically addressing vision loss, and health systems in low- and middle-income regions are strained by limited workforce, inadequate funding, and unequal geographic access.

What needs to be done

WHO urges member states to strengthen integrated people-centred eye care, develop and implement national strategies, incorporate eye health indicators into their health information systems, expand the health workforce, increase public awareness, and ensure eye care is affordable and accessible. Campaigns like World Sight Day are key moments to mobilize communities, policy-makers, and health systems toward achieving universal eye care and reducing the burden of preventable vision loss.

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