When correctible visual defects are not diagnosed in time they become an important matter of public health, which has been clearly identified in the National Healthcare Plan and justified the need for this Programa Nacional de Saúde da Visão (National Eye Health Programme).

The sense of vision has a high social significance representing a fundamental means of communication for people’s relationships and professional activities.

Today, we know that even more important than the sharpness of vision per se is the way each person uses their vision, that is, their functional vision, and all the measures that will likely improve it.

We also know that we ought to preserve our eyesight since birth, where it is essential to prevent and treat eye disorders, which will always lead to a poorer quality of life with negative repercussions on a personal, family, and professional level as well as much higher social costs.

However, eye disorders and visual system disorders are extremely frequent in the overall population, where progressive ageing of the Portuguese population is one of the factors that have contributed the most to this situation.

Technological evolution in general and medical sciences in particular allow for a large number of people to improve their eyesight and prevent blindness.

In fact, a more informed population associated with the huge strides that we have taken over the past years in terms of diagnosing and treating eye disorders have made it possible for diseases that had been considered as incurable a few years ago to be prevented and treated today.

Although ophthalmology has renown traditions in Portugal and is characterised by a high level of scientific quality, in order to optimise it, it is fundamental to develop this Programa Nacional para a Saúde da Visão (National Eye Health Programme) and the existing Rede Nacional de Referenciação em Oftalmologia (national ophthalmology referral network) in order to make the most of what we have by providing suitable conditions for excellence to grow, filling in the gaps, and decreasing inequality by improving access and equity in this specific area of provided healthcare.

The Programa Nacional para a Saúde da Visão (National Eye Health Programme) is mostly applied by means of implementing intervention strategies for the development of national plans, which ought to be replicated and adapted on a regional level taking into consideration the existing local specificities and resources.

In order to accomplish these strategies, DGS has constituted within the scope of this programme a Scientific Committee that comprises representatives of the Portuguese Society of Ophthalmology, Medical Association, Nursing Order, and high ophthalmology education without loss for resorting to necessary scientific and technical collaborations with other institutions and entities, such as patient associations.

The intervention strategies consigned in the Programa Nacional para a Saúde da Visão (National Eye Health Programme) ought to be made operational in terms of intercepting and complementing other healthcare programmes incorporated into the National Healthcare Programme, namely the Programa Nacional de Educação para a Saúde, Literacia e Autocuidado (National Healthcare, Literacy, and Self-Care Education Programme) and Programa Nacional de Prevenção e Gestão da Doença Crónica (National Chronic Disease Prevention and Management Programme).