The main purposes of GVD are to:
- Provide estimates for the prevalence of blindness and vision impairment and risk factors globally and to make these accessible.
- Advise WHO and other international organizations on the most appropriate methods and assumptions for their global, regional and country level eye health epidemiological estimates.
- Advise researchers and public health officials on the different issues involved in the estimation of cause-specific blindness and vision impairment.
- Act as repository of high quality population-based studies of blindness and vision impairment data, in order to heighten accuracy of estimates and to securely preserve datasets into the future.