Many people (rightfully) associate February with love, romance, candy hearts and dark chocolate. But February is also National AMD and Low Vision Awareness Month, which gives many eyecare professionals an opportunity to address the realities of vision loss and inform people how they can take care of their eyes.

Prevent Blindness and Bausch + Lomb, a leading global eye health company are teaming up for the fifth consecutive year for the SightMatters program, an effort to raise awareness of Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), one of the leading causes of vision loss in adults 50 years of age and older.

According to the National Eye Institute, AMD is a progressive eye disease that blurs the macula, the part of the eye responsible for central vision. Although it doesn’t cause complete blindness, it can severely impact a person’s quality of life since loss of central vision makes it harder to see faces, drive, and do close-up work like cooking and cleaning.

Throughout February, Bausch + Lomb and Prevent Blindness will post a variety of content on their social media pages to share facts and helpful information about AMD with the public including information on how to care for one’s eyes and raise awareness about the symptoms, risk factors and treatment of AMD or Low Vision.

Bausch + Lomb will also donate $1 to Prevent Blindness and its sight-saving fund for every “share” or “like” of certain posts that promote this donation from the Bausch + Lomb SightMatters Facebook page at www.facebook.com/SightMattersCommunity.

You can also learn more about AMD and low vision at www.sightmatters.com/amd-awareness and preventblindness.org/amd.

The infographic below is an example of some of the information that will be posted as part of the SightMatters campaign.