The Peter Watson Memorial Lecture “Vision for the World”

In the 1990s attention was drawn to the huge global problem of blindness and vision loss; most of which was unnecessary, being preventable or treatable. This led to the global initiative, Vision 2020. Over the last 30 years a lot of progress has been made in developing and implementing eye care programmes to address this and particularly to reach underserved populations. In 2019 the World Health Organisation produced the World Report on Vision that sets a clear pathway to develop Integrated Person-centred Eye Care. Indicators have been developed to track progress and national governments are to report on their progress. Data on eye health and vision loss have been collected from multiple population-based studies and analysed by the Vision Loss Expert Group. These data show that although the prevalence rates of vision loss and blindness are decreasing around the world, the actual number of people affected is slowly increasing. This is due to both population growth and the aging of the population. To provide the equity in eye care that is required, attention needs to be paid to integrating eye care into primary care and linking it with other specialist services. An important step is the training and development of coordinated eye care teams that are resourced to meet their population-based needs and to monitor the progress being made.