World Health Day is commemorated each year on April 7th and marks the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1948.
This year’s theme is Our Planet, our health – “in the midst of a pandemic, a polluted planet, and increasing diseases like cancer, asthma and heart disease, WHO will focus global attention this World Health Day 2022 on urgent actions needed to keep humans and the planet healthy and foster a movement to create societies focused on well-being.”
According to the World Health Organization’s fact sheet on Blindness and Vision, published in October 2021:
- Globally, at least 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment. In at least 1 billion – or almost half – of these cases, vision impairment could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed.
- The leading causes of vision impairment and blindness are uncorrected refractive errors and cataracts.
- The majority of people with vision impairment and blindness are over the age of 50 years; however, vision loss can affect people of all ages.
- Vision impairment poses an enormous global financial burden with the annual global costs of productivity losses associated with vision impairment from uncorrected myopia and presbyopia alone estimated to be US$ 244 billion and US$ 25.4 billion.
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Fast facts on climate and health.