VIJAYAWADA: The third phase of YSR Kanti Velugu and Nadu-Nedu, aimed at developing government hospitals to make them like corporate ones, will be launched by Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy in Kurnool district on Tuesday. Eye screening for people aged 60 years and above will be held as part of the third phase of Kanti Velugu, which will go on till July 31, 2020, and cover 56,88,424 people. The scheme will be launched in one mandal per Assembly segment and in a third of wards in urban constituencies. Later, it will be expanded to cover all villages/ wards in all 175 Assembly segments.
Surgeries from March 1 in 52 govt, 81 NGO hospitals
Screening will be conducted at village secretariats, and volunteers and village secretariat staff have been tasked with getting the elderly to attend the check-ups. Each screening team consists of an ASHA worker, village secretariat ANM, sub centre ANM and a paramedical ophthalmic officer. In all, 500 teams will conduct secondary eye screening, and each mandal will have two or three screening teams. The PHC medical officer will be in charge of supervising the programme.
As part of the scheme, officials will conduct basic eye screening, and prescribe spectacles and medicines, besides referring patients for cataract surgeries and tertiary eye care. Details of those eye examinations will be entered online, and medical records, banners and posters will be printed and distributed to all districts. Expecting that cataract surgical intervention will be needed in 8-10 lakh cases, the government has decided to conduct the surgeries from March 1 in 52 government and 81 registered NGO hospitals.
Tertiary eye care services for diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, tumours etc. will be provided at tertiary eye care centres such as teaching hospitals, LVPEI, Sankara Eye Hospital, Pushpagiri and Sankara Foundation. The 52 government institutes where cataract surgeries will be conducted have 10 varieties of modern ophthalmic equipment: Operating microscopes, cataract sets, slit lamps with application tonometer, auto refractometer with keratometer, a-scan, trail boxes, illuminating vision charts, yag laser, ophthalmoscopes, teaching aid CCTV and monitors. Officials have also decided to improve the skills of ophthalmic specialists by training them in modern techniques.
As many as 45 ophthalmic surgeons from government institutions in the State have been identified for IOL training by a team of experts from LV Prasad Eye Institution at three government institutions - Regional Eye Hospitals in Vizag and Kurnool, and Government General Hospital in Guntur. In Phase-II, 1,34,252 (2.02%) children with vision defects were identified and prescribed spectacles. As many as 56,767 spectacles were distributed and the remaining 77,485 are being processed. Under Phase-I, 60,401 schools (with 66,15,467 children) were covered, and 4,36,979 children with eye problems were identified.