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Published: 25.11.2021
Simon Darvill Head of Communications
IAPB
Eye Health Heroes 2021
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World Sight Day 2021 was bigger than ever before; from the collective ambition to the execution. The Love Your Eyes campaign mobilised our World Sight Day Global Partners, Members, Patrons, Valued Suppliers, the wider eye health sector, and the public, bringing attention to issues around vision in a big way.

At the start of the campaign, we set a target of testing one million pairs of eyes before World Sight Day. We smashed our target with over 3.6 million pledges made, with thousands of organisations and individuals helping us achieve this.

Our Everyone Counts Global Challenge was a momentous success as well. Countless number of screenings and events were held across the globe, from a remote village near Mount Everest to Bondi Beach in Australia, Gateway of India to under the shade of a Ceiba Chodatii tree in Paraguay. The standout image of the day was from the Magrabi Foundation in Egypt who carried out sight tests at the Giza Necropolis; this image alongside images from Tower Bridge in London, Brooklyn Bridge in New York and Mwanza City at the shore of Lake Victoria near the Bismark rock in Tanzania were picked up by the Press Association and covered in over 350 publications worldwide.

Our World Sight Day report summarises this year’s successes and gives a snapshot of the work done across IAPB’s members and the wider sector on World Sight Day. We hope this report will be shared far and wide so that everyone can share in the success of this year’s World Sight Day and start to think about plans for World Sight Day 2022.

IAPB’s own media outreach received over 700 different pieces of coverage on World Sight Day. In total, these items had a potential audience of 65.7 million. IAPBs own coverage joined over 2000 items of media about World Sight Day around the world, everything from breakfast TV in Kenya, to news broadcasts in Canada and newspapers around the world from India to Nigeria, UK to Brazil.

#WorldSightDay trended on social media in Australia, India, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, UK, Canada and USA, reaching 17.5million accounts around the world. Data from social media reports show that IAPB is the top influencer on social media both for #WorldSightDay and #LoveYourEyes.

Using key social listening insights and research IAPBs own social media advertising campaign reached 4.6 million people in India, Nigeria and the USA creating 1.7 million visits to the IAPB website.

None of this year’s success would have been possible without the support of our World Sight Day Global Partners: Allergan, Bayer, OneSight, Novartis, Seva Foundation and the World Council of Optometry as well as the support of IAPB Global Ambassador James Chen whom we thank both for their investment and support over the past year.

Thank you to everyone for your involvement and we hope you find this report useful and stimulating.

World Sight Day 2021 - Love Your Eyes Report