2020 In Review: An opportunity missed?

The year 2020 had been earmarked as a year that the optical sector could take advantage of as far back as 1999. When the World Health Organization (WHO) launched its Vision 2020: The Right to Sight campaign just before the turn of the millennium there was optimism that the initiative’s commendable goal to eliminate preventable blindness globally would be within reach by this year. But even for a profession so acquainted with providing clear vision, none could have foreseen the global impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

‘There were a lot of big projects planned for this year that were meant to celebrate 2020 and eye health successes,’ says Matt Broom, former CEO at Vision UK, ‘but the pandemic has put a kibosh on pretty much everything.’ Vision UK unfortunately closed this year in July as funding shortages rippled across the profession, leaving the membership-fee dependent organisation with an insufficient budget to carry out its plans.