Welcome to World Glaucoma Week 2022 / #GlaucomaWeek

World Glaucoma Week is a global joint initiative between the World Glaucoma Association (WGA) and the World Glaucoma Patient Committee (WGPC), in order to raise awareness on glaucoma. Through a series of engaging worldwide activities patients, eye-care providers, health officials, and the general public are invited to contribute to sight preservation. The goal is to alert everyone to have regular eye (and optic nerve) checks in order to detect glaucoma as early as possible.

Each year, the World Glaucoma Week adopts a common theme, which is adapted to local conditions, and yet unifies our efforts. To be effective, community awareness projects need to be relevant to the general population. That means they need to be based locally and thus, rely on individuals in each location to be actively involved, adopting the unifying global message into local culture.

To eliminate glaucoma blindness, there are several issues that need to be addressed. Glaucoma usually gives no warning until it is advanced, but the damage it causes to vision is ongoing and could become irreversible. Fortunately, for many patients treatment can halt the damage. That means the earlier the diagnosis, the more vision there is to save and the less likely the person is to become blind. Therefore, the World Glaucoma Week aims at alerting members of the broader community to the need for regular simple eye checks, which allow earlier detection and, hence, saved sight.

Newsletters and social media posts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) can inspire you and give you some ideas to arrange a project in your own area or neighborhood. This will create a network in which we are all able to motivate and guide one another as we share our goals and strategies. By sharing successes, as well as less successful ventures, we are able to learn from one another and be even more effective in reaching our goal; the elimination of glaucoma blindness.

For further details about who is at risk, what are the symptoms, and how glaucoma can be treated, both patients and the general public may visit glaucomapatients.org.

When it comes to glaucoma, the ‘sneak thief of sight’, lack of awareness may cause severe issues, that could even lead to permanent vision loss. And as glaucoma isn’t always under the radar of health officials worldwide, the World Glaucoma Week activities are crucial. How can people contribute?

The overarching goal of this campaign is for everyone to know about the disease called ‘glaucoma’ and encourage the general public to go and get tested. Glaucoma is one of the leading causes of irreversible blindness, but with early treatment, the damage may get limited and sight may be saved. By promoting regular testing, we also want glaucoma patients to get their relatives involved, as the chances of them getting glaucoma are 10 times higher than someone with no glaucoma history in their close family environment. Therefore, the World Glaucoma Week is a great opportunity to raise awareness through word of mouth, and organizing imaginative, publicity-attractive awareness projects locally.

Check out our articles on Glaucoma below:

• • What is Glaucoma? https://eyeqjamaica.com/glaucomaawareness
  • Start Valuing your Eyes! https://eyeqjamaica.com/keep-your-eyes-on-the-prize-feature-for-gleaner-on-world-sight-day