CBM President Professor Allen Foster met with the Director-General Dr Margaret Chan, for the World Health Organizations global initiative to eliminate avoidable blindness “Vision 2020: The Right to Sight” on the eve of World Sight Day 2007 at WHO Headquarters Geneva.
Dr. Chan thanked CBM for their longstanding 20 year partnership and support, both financially and with technical personnel, for the prevention of blindness, deafness and for other disability related programmes in the developing World.
World Sight Day 2007 will be celebrated on Thursday 11th October to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment for Children.
“Early intervention is key to ensuring that children with eye problems have the best possible outcomes in the developing countries,” says Prof. Foster. “Almost 50 percent of the world’s 1.4 million children living without sight are needlessly blind, from avoidable causes. This is a major public health priority that needs to be addressed.”
Every minute, a child goes blind – in the developing world, a child has a 60% chance of dying within one year of going blind. Over 1 million children in the developing world under the age of 15 are now blind.
CBM is a founding member of VISION 2020: the Right to Sight which is a global initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB). We are working together to eliminate avoidable blindness worldwide by the year 2020, in order to give everyone in the world the Right to Sight.
CBM currently supports 1,011 disability-focused projects in 112 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. CBM has performed 8 million cataract surgeries worldwide.
CBM is an expert at helping people with disabilities throughout the developing world.