LVPEI, Standard Chartered Bank launch community eye screening program in Siddipet

HYDERABAD: L. V. Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), in association with Standard Chartered Bank and government healthcare facilities on Sunday launched a large-scale community eye screening project in the Siddipet district of Telangana.

Over the next four years, this initiative is anticipated to benefit over 500,000 individuals in 180 villages in 9 mandals within Siddipet district.

The project focuses on providing assistance to vulnerable groups such as the elderly, women, and children. The project also aims to establish a robust eye care infrastructure and well-trained staff in the district, ensuring sustainable eye care services.

The proposed solution is anticipated to decrease the current blindness prevalence from approximately 2 percent to 0.3 percent. The 'Closing the Gap' project, implemented at LVPEI's Secondary Eye Care Centre, 'Krishna Sindhura Eye Centre,' in Siddipet, aims to bridge the gap in eye care.

The project aims to

• Enhance the capacity of local resources available in both government and private sectors to provide high-quality eye care services.
• Engage community eye health workers.
• Conduct a door-to-door eye screening program to identify individuals with eye problems.
• Offer referrals and provide services to all those in need at primary and secondary level eye care facilities within the district, and for tertiary care services at L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad.

Impact of the projects implemented under the LVPEI-SCB Partnership until now by Standard Chartered - LVPEI Academy for Eye Care Education

• Established a high-quality National Resource Centre for Eye Care Education and 10 Educational Hubs.
• Trained and empowered over 58,000 eye care personnel worldwide, with over 70% of them being women.
• Over 1,200 trained rural youths have gained sustainable employment and internships, leading to commendable improvements in their quality of life.
• Currently, over 8,000 learners benefit annually from our Continuing Professional Development programs.
• Approximately 5,000 postgraduate ophthalmology and optometry students and faculty from several colleges across the country benefit from high-quality eye care online education, overcoming the barriers of distances and time zones.
• An estimated 10,000 knowledge seekers benefit from educational content on social media platforms.

Futuristic Vision Centre Model

• Out of the 63 committed vision centres under this partnership, more than 41 Technology-Enabled Futuristic Vision Centres have already been established across Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha & Karnataka. The remaining 22 are scheduled to be established by March 2024.
• To date, these centres have served over 212,000 individuals, with 48% of them being women, all of whom have received services entirely free of cost.
• Among all the Vision Centres established with SCB's support, an impressive 61% of the Vision Technician staff responsible for managing these centres are women.
• These centres not only offer primary eye care services but are also equipped with advanced technology:
• They have portable perimeters and fundus cameras that aid in detecting vision-threatening conditions like Glaucoma and retinal diseases.
• o Furthermore, a Teleophthalmology facility enables initial consultations and diagnoses, along with follow-up care by trained ophthalmologists. This significantly reduces the time and costs that patients would otherwise incur while traveling to secondary and tertiary centres.