The right to sight.

World health organization (WHO) and International agency for the prevention of blindness (IAPB) along with local Governmental and Non-Governmental partners lunched a global initiative for elimination of avoidable blindness in the late 1990s with an aim to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020. World sight day is observed on the second Thursday of October to highlight the plight of people with visual impairment and blindness every year. WHO estimates that 285 million people are visually impaired, 246 million have low vision and 39 million are blind: 80% percent of the blindness is preventable and 90% of them live in the developing countries. 1 Globally, uncorrected refractive errors are the main cause of visual impairment and cataract is the leading cause of blindness. 1 A population based study conducted for people above 30 years of age in central India found that the age standardized prevalence of visual impairment and blindness was 17% and 0.5% based on the presenting visual acuity. 2 This study also showed that the most frequent cause of visual impairment and blindness were refractive errors and cataract (75%) respectively. Nepal conducted population based blindness survey in 1980/1981. The prevalence of blindness in that survey was 0.84%. The causes of blindness were cataract (66.8%) followed by corneal scars (8.4%), glaucoma (3.2%), trachoma (2.4%) and posterior segment diseases (13.9%). 3 Prevalence of refractive errors could not be estimated at that study as visual acuity was recorded with pin hole only. Prevention of blindness program was launched in Nepal following the survey leading to establishment of eye hospitals and training of ophthalmologists and ophthalmic assistants. However, most of the hospitals are located in Kathmandu and accessible areas in plains bordering India. As a result, most of the people receiving eye service are either people from around cities and towns in Nepal or Non-Nepalese. This did not help to reduce visual impairment and blindness to a desirable level in Nepal even though lots of national and international resources were invested towards that end. Studies on ocular morbidity in school children in Kathmandu showed that the prevalence of refractive errors were found from 8. Nepal lunched Vision 2020 Program in the year 1999 with Apex Body for Eye Health at the Ministry of Health and Population. A midterm review of Vision 2020 Nepal was done in 2010 which found that basic eye care facilities were hardly available beyond District head quarters and …