One of India’s biggest public health problems is blindness. Over 12 million Indians, which includes 320,000 children are completely blind. Early detection and timely treatment could have prevented blindness in nearly 80% of these people.
In an attempt to promote awareness of vision care and promote early detection of eye related diseases, One Good Step is working with the Sankara Foundation to hold eye screening programmes in schools in the Chikballapur district of Karnataka. Over the next one year, we hope to cover over 10,000 school children in the area.
One Good Step will help identify children with eye related issues and Sankara Foundation will offer specialized treatment for them.
The first eye camp was held on August 20th and covered 1782 children with nearly 15% of children with suspected eye problems. Volunteers from the “Samarpan” group of IT giant Infosys underwent a training program that equipped them to conduct a basic eye screening test. Working in batches of 2, the volunteers then screened children in their school premises itself.
This eye camp will help identify the children who are suffering from some eye related problems. These children will then undergo a secondary examination by ophthalmologists from Sankara Hospital.
One Good Step has taken up initiative to raise funds and provide for the spectacle frames for those children who require corrective lenses .
On a scheduled date, children requiring surgical procedures will be brought to the Sankara centre at Marthahalli in Bangalore. Doctors at the Sankara Foundation have undertaken the responsibility of conducting the necessary tests and performing the surgeries. One Good Step will coordinate with the schools to arrange the post-surgical follow-up for these children.
We look forward to have more corporate teams and other groups work with us to conduct the basic eye screening camp in schools across Chikballapur. It is estimated that 20 volunteers, working in teams of 2 can screen about 1000 children in 4 hours. For more details, please contact: getintouch@onegoodstep.org