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Moving from World Glaucoma Day to World Glaucoma Week
George N. Lambrou, World Glaucoma Week project leader
The third annual observance of the World Glaucoma Day - celebrated on March 12, 2010 - confirmed the enthusiastic rallying of thousands of volunteers around the world to the cause of awareness and prevention of suffering from avoidable vision loss by the 'sneak thief of sight'. However, digging into 'lessons-learned' from this three-year experience, we realized that in spite of the global rallying behind the initiative, a cultural diversity emerged: In many countries, having World Glaucoma Day on a weekend reduced its impact and the potential for broad community involvement. To accommodate every-body's needs and to maximize global and local awareness efforts the WGA and WGPA decided to extend the World Glaucoma Day into a 'World Glaucoma Week'.
In 2011 the 'Week' replaced the 'Day' in the World Glaucoma logo and - most important - in an upgraded and user-friendlier website, which offered ideas, material and tracking tools for activities designed to raise disease awareness in the community. To keep pace with rapidly evolving global media habits, a facebook site was also initiated, where anyone can easily post their pictures, videos, comments, 'likes' and 'dislikes'. Don't miss the opportunity to sneak a peek at http://www.facebook.com/WGWeek.
Another innovation was the adoption of an annual rallying slogan. This year, the slogan was 'Don't lose sight of your family', piloted a couple of years ago by Glaucoma Australia in a successful campaign to turn the spotlight on the fact that glaucoma does run in families. It was a playful way to remind patients that, once a case is detected, it is a very sensible thing to urge all family members to get screened before any 'sight is lost', irretrievably.
Thus, year after year the concept evolves. And yet, behind the changes, one thing remains constant, and a source of awe and respect: the warmth with which the World Glaucoma Day, then Week, has been embraced by eye care professionals and patients around the world, across cultural and linguistic barriers. Learning from the past, and looking to next year's WGWeek (March 11-17, 2012), let us all start thinking how we can contribute to further raising glaucoma awareness, for the highest benefit of our patients.
On behalf of the WGW committee,
George N. Lambrou
World Glaucoma
Week project leader