The accomplishments of the global initiative VISION 2020: The Right to Sight and the focus for the next 8 years of the campaign

Abstract

In the first 12 years of VISION 2020 sound programmatic approaches have been developed that are capable of delivering equitable eye health services to even the most remote and impoverished communities. A body of evidence around the economic arguments for investment in eye health has been developed that has fuelled successful advocacy work resulting in supportive high level policy statements. More than a 100 national plans to achieve the elimination of avoidable blindness have been developed and some notable contributions made from the corporate and government sectors to resource eye health programs. Good progress has been made to control infectious blinding diseases and at the very least there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the global increase in the prevalence of blindness and visual impairment has been reversed in recent years, despite the ever increasing and more elderly global population. However if we are to achieve the goal of VISION 2020 we require a considerable scaling up of current efforts-this will depend on our future success in two key areas: i) Successful advocacy and engagement at individual country level to secure significantly enhanced national government commitment to financing their own VISION 2020 plans.ii) A new approach to VISION 2020 thinking that integrates eye health into health system development and develops new partnerships with wider health development initiatives.

Figure 1

Projected estimates made at the launch of VISION 2020 of the number of blind people in the world in 2000 and how that would increase over the next two decades and the latest 2010 data estimate of 39 million. Courtesy of Dr. Allen Foster

Figure 2

Increasing cataract surgical rates in India between 1985 and 2008. Courtesy of Dr. A. S Rathore

Figure 3

VISION 2020—a brief history of time

Figure 4

The foundations of the health system. Courtesy of Karl Blanchett and Robert Lindfield[27]

Figure 5

The inter-relations between VISION 2020 diseases and the NonCommunicable Disease and Neglected Tropical Disease movements. Courtesy Dr. Kate Taylor