World Sight Day is an annual day of awareness held on the second Thursday of October, to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment. World Sight Day 2016 takes place October 13. This year’s theme and call to action is “Stronger Together,” encouraging a focus on all stakeholders who are important for successful delivery of eyecare – Optos being one of those stakeholders.

 

Optos plc has the vision to be The Retina Company and is recognized as a leading provider of devices to eyecare professionals for improved patient care. Optos was founded and incorporated in 1992 by Douglas Anderson after his then five-year-old son went blind in one eye because a retinal detachment was detected too late. Although his son was having routine eye exams, the exams were uncomfortable, and difficult for a child to sit still through, which made it impossible for his eye doctor to conduct a complete exam and view the entire retina. Anderson’s mission was to commercialize a patient-friendly, easy to use and comfortable retinal imaging product that encompassed a digital widefield image of the retina in a single capture. Fast forward to 1999: the P200 received both 510k clearance from the FDA and the EU CE marking. Optos devices have been sold worldwide since …

In a world where the calendar is jammed with awareness months, should home eye safety and injury prevention really demand our attention? The answer is crystal clear. With two million eye injuries taking place each year in the United States¹, eye safety is something in which everyone has a stake. Let’s look at the numbers:

 

— The U.S. Eye Injury Registry estimates that each year Americans suffer over two million eye injuries.

 

— The American Academy of Ophthalmology² and the American Society of Ocular Trauma report that close to 45% of these injuries take place at home.

 

— Over 40% of eye injuries were caused by work related to home repairs, yard work, cleaning and cooking. Another 40% occurred during sports or recreation.

 

— Over one-third of injuries took place in the living areas in the home – places like the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and family room.

 

— There are 125,000 eye accidents a year involving household chemicals³. This totals over 10% of the total at-home eye injuries.

 

What’s even more sobering? It’s estimated that 90% of eye injuries can be prevented.

 

Building Public Awareness about Eye Injury at Home

 

Statistics like these explain why …