 Hello and welcome to week two. By the mid 90s it became fairly apparent that something had to be done about the magnitude of blindness, particularly in low and middle income countries where we had rapid growth of populations as well as aging populations. In this week we'll look at what has been the response at a global level and the development of vision 2020, the right to sight initiative. We'll use a range of activities to look at what has been the impact of these global initiatives, what is happening at present and what has been planned for the next decade. In this week we have a presentation by Peter Acklin from the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness in which he highlights some of the relevance and the interconnections between global planning and the application at a local level. This week we also introduce you to our case study. This is a district eye care case study which shares common challenges faced by many eye care providers from around the world. We will use this case study throughout this course. We highly recommend that you use this case study to support your reflection but also to share your own experiences and thoughts on the discussion forum.