Dr. Usha R, U08116
Though community comprehensive eye camps have been practised for many years the reach has been significantly low .Alternatively primary eye care centers have been established since 2004 by our tertiary hospital with the objective of providing comprehensive eye examination permanently to a rural population of 60,000 where there is no eye care provider.
Presently, its network of 59 centres covering 4 million population In the centre, the vision technicians perform complete ocular examination and documented inelectronic medical record and make them available to the base hospital ophthalmologist for consultation over video-conferencing. With this model only 10% of the patients are advised to visit base hospital for further investigations and treatment procedures.
With active eye examination for diabetic patients, glaucoma suspects, field level motivation and periodic follow up from the base hospital the vision centres can reach close to 70% of the needy population within 5 years