BENGALURU: State will soon have super-speciality ICUs dedicated to premature births, said the minister for medical education Dr Sharan Prakash Patil, who was speaking at the inauguration of a service at Narayana Nethralaya on Tuesday. “Soon, we will have dedicated super speciality ICUs at Victoria Hospital and other government hospitals which will help with premature births,” said Dr Patil.
He was inaugurating a screening programme to detect and treat a condition, Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), which affects the vision of premature babies. It is the leading cause of blindness among infants in the world and, if detected within four weeks of birth, can be completely rectified.
The e-training and service model at the hospital is called WISE-ROP(Wide-field Imaging of Infants for Screening and Education for Retinopathy of Prematurity).
The launch was to address the inadequate number of trained specialists to screen and treat the condition.
“There are around one lakh infants born who require eye treatment or else they will go blind. Sadly, people are not aware that they need to get the infant’s eyes screened if born premature. Ten-thousand babies are are not even screened and treated,” Dr Bhujang Shetty,Chairman.