To make eye health accessible to the poor in remote villages we:
- Organise outreach eye screening camps or provide door-to-door eye screening services in remote villages
- Identify people having blindness or vision impairment due to cataract or refractive error
- Provide free transport facility for people needing treatment from villages to base eye hospital and drop them back to village post treatment
- At the base eye hospital provide free treatment, food, lodging, and medicine
- Provide free corrective glasses to people with refractive error who otherwise could not afford it
Why we do it?
As many as 8.8 million people in India are blind and another 47.7 million people have moderate and severe vision impairment, according to a study published online by The Lancet Global Health journal.
In the population >50 age, Cataract is the principal cause of blindness (66.2%) followed by Corneal opacity(7.4%) and Glaucoma(5.5%). While refractive error (20.3%) is the major cause of severe and moderate vision impairment. While in age 0-49, refractive error is cause for moderate and severe vision impairment among 38.2% cases of vision impairment (National Blindness and Visual Impairment Survey India 2015-19).
Blindness due to cataract are easily treatable with a simple surgery and visual impairment due to refractive error can be cured by just using a spectacles. Thus about 85% of people who are not able to see can see again if treated at the right time. But due to poverty and inaccessible eye health facilities in rural areas people are forced to remain visually impaired.
There are over 6,50,000 villages in India and 70% of our population lives in rural areas. While eye is one of the most important parts of the body, eye health services are extremely poor in rural areas. Some private clinics are available in the town, but these are not accessible to the rural poor as the treatment charge is extremely high. Poor transport facility is another barrier for people in rural areas to access eye health services.
Most of the poor eye patients in rural areas, due to unaffordable and inaccessible eye health services within their reach, are forced to live with visual impairment and blindness for years and years, negatively affecting their quality of life and economy of family and the nation.
Mother and daughter during eye screening camp
Impact of restoring eyesight
To help someone see again is a tremendous feeling. When a person is able to see, he/she does not need to be dependent on others, could do his/her daily activity by themselves, have better social life, perform their livelihood activities and contribute to the family and nation.