Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 79.djvu/1515

 79 STAT. ]

PROCLAMATION 3640-FEB. 24, 1965

1475

Proclamation 3640 SAVE YOUR VISION WEEK, 1965 By the President of the United States of America

February 24. 1965

A Proclamation

WHEREAS preservation of vision is of the utmost importance to each individual and to the Nation as a whole; and WHEREAS cataracts, glaucoma, and other chronic diseases continue to be the major causes of visual impairments and blindness; and WHEREAS both children and adults are frequently threatened with blindness because visual abnormalities which were present at birth go undetected until irreversible vision loss has occurred; and WHEREAS blindness or serious visual loss is often preventable through early eye examinations of preschool age and school age children and through the early detection of visual deficiencies among the chronically ill and aging; and WHEREAS effective vision preservation will be achieved only if all our people are aware of the need for proper vision care, and take advantage of all means available to them to conserve their sight; and WHEREAS the Congress, by a joint resolution approved December 30, 1963 (77 Stat. 629), has 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 7, 1965, 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 and health care professions, and all other agencies concerned with programs for the improvement and preservation of vision to unite in public activities to impress upon the people of the United States the importance of vision to their own welfare and that of our country, and to urge their participation in programs to improve and protect the vision of our people. I N W I T N E S S WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed. D O N E at the City of Washington this 24th day of February in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-five, and of [SEAL] the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-ninth. LYNDON B. JOHNSON

By the President: DEAN R U S K,

Secretary

of

State.

36 USC i69a.

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