HYDERABAD: Telangana state has 2 per cent rate of prevalence of blindness, reveals the District Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS-4) data. This is the highest in the country.
The DLHS data clearly indicates that the state government needs to ramp up its infrastructure for controlling the increasing rate of blindness in the state.
In India, blindness is caused mainly due to two reasons: cataract and refractive errors like near and far sightedness. And both of them can be avoided if adequate healthcare is available.
The Central government, as far back as in 1976, had launched the National Programme for Control of Blindness (NPCB) for preventing occurrence of blindness.
However, thanks to the poor financial and infrastructural support from the state and following governments at the Centre, the National Programme for Control of Blindness has not been implemented efficiently and widely in the state of Telangana ever since its formulation.
State of affairs
Telangana has around 150 ophthalmic assistants today, located only in the Cluster Health Centres instead of the Primary Health Centres (PHCs). These ophthalmic assistants play a key role in implementation of the School Eye Screening programme of NPCB.
As part of the SES, the assistants prescribe glasses to students of government school aged between 10 and 14 and diagnosed with refractive error. These glasses are provided for free under the programme.
Statistically speaking, there are around 10 lakh children in the age group of 10-14 studying in government schools in the state. This means, each ophthalmic assistant has to keep track of at least 7,000 children every year. This makes it quite clear why, as per NPCB data, the state government could not achieve the target of providing glasses to 52,930 school children in the years 2014-16. They could provide glasses to around 46,000 school children.
Meanwhile, other states including Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, for the same period, exceeded their targets providing glasses to over 2.3 lakh and 1.5 lakh children respectively.
Other issues
Lack of adequate infrastructure and expertise at district level to undertake cataract surgeries is another issue.
While Gujarat and MP conducted 16 lakh and 10 lakh cataract surgeries in 2014-16 respectively, only 10 lakh surgeries were conducted in Telangana.
NPCB officials pointed out that there has also been a delay in allotment of money by the Centre and state. The central government recently released around Rs 4 crore to NPCB in the state for the year 2016-17 and the state is yet to release its share.