Buoyed by the overwhelming response to the ‘Kanti Velugu’ , a unique programme launched in Telangana four months ago to take up universal and comprehensive eye screening for entire State population, government is eyeing for a place in the Guinness World Records for the highest number of people screened under a specific health scheme in a day.
The number of patients screened, problems identified, spectacles distributed is uploaded with the help of customised software application from every eye camp to the dashboard for real time monitoring. Once a claim is made, the Guinness World Records deploys official record adjudicators authorised to verify the authenticity of setting a record, sources said.
Launched on August 15, 2018 with an aim to work towards ‘Avoidable Blindness Free Telangana”, as many as 1,09,48,949 persons were screened so far in rural and urban areas. About 40% of the screened were found to have eye related problems.
Effective intervention
“Kanti Velugu” programme proved to be an effective intervention for those with compromised vision, admit those drafted for the programme. People in every camp turned out in huge numbers because of unmet demand for proper eye care. In the last four months, 60% of habitations were covered and the target was to cover the entire population by March-end, sources said.
Thanks to the pre-announced camp schedules, the data reveals that the average number of people screened for vision test and eye related issues per day in all the camps held at Primary Health Centres in rural areas and in every ward in urban areas is 1.5 lakh. Apart from meticulous planning, adequate personnel, equipment like auto-refractors for eye examination were provided before rolling out the scheme. Each of the 826 camp teams deployed comprised a medical officer, an optometrist and six to eight support staff like ANMs. A camp typically lasts for two to three days at a PHC depending on the population in the village.
Of the screened, over 18 lakh reading glasses were distributed free of cost to people needing simple refractive error correction and 13.76 lakh people were identified for prescription spectacles for better vision. About 6.6 lakh people were earmarked for secondary and tertiary referrals requiring cataract and other surgeries and further care for corneal disorders and glaucoma.
The free cataract surgeries will be taken up soon by empanelled government, NGO run and private hospitals and also with help under National Programme for Control of Blindness (NPCB), sources said.
