Proclamation 3831—Save Your Vision Week, 1968

Each year more than 30,000 Americans become blind. Early detection and proper treatment would prevent half of these tragedies.

Those who act in time can often protect the irreplaceable gift of eyesight. Eye examinations, beginning during preschool years and continuing periodically through life, can detect sight defects early enough for treatment.

For example, preschool checks can help prevent one-eye blindness from amblyopia later in life. Periodic examinations of adults can reveal elevated pressure within the eye soon enough to prevent blindness from glaucoma.

Every American should make a habit of regular eye examinations. For persons who cannot secure proper vision care on their own, assistance is offered by public and private health agencies.

To emphasize the importance of regular eye care, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved December 30, 1963 (77 Stat. 629), requested the President to issue annually a proclamation designating the first week in March of each year as Save Your Vision Week.

Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning March 3, 1968, as Save Your Vision Week, and I invite the Governors of the States, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and officials of other areas subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to issue similar proclamations.

I also call upon the communications media, the medical, optometric, and other health care professions, as well as all private and public agencies concerned with the improvement and preservation of sight, to join in public activities that will impress upon all Americans the importance of maintaining good vision and of participating in programs to protect vision.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-seventh day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-second.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON