‘BEST’ behind success of Kanti Velugu

The unique Basic Eye Screening Test protocol developed is the secret behind the huge success of Kanti Velugu initiative

Hyderabad: The unique Basic Eye Screening Test (BEST) protocol developed by researchers from LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) in collaboration with the State Health Department is the secret behind the huge success of the Telangana government’s flagship Kanti Velugu initiative.

Before the launch of the Kanti Velugu scheme in Telangana, no other State in the country had attempted to launch an eye screening programme on such an immense scale. Conducting a typical eye screening test by following standard existing protocols on an individual takes at least 10 to 15 minutes and following such protocols to implement Kanti Velugu, which envisages screening 1.5 crore individuals in 100 working days for eye defects, is quite impossible.

The challenge to implement such a mass eye screening programme was to address the inherent shortage of doctors or eye specialists for conducting the tests. Taking this difficulty head-on, senior health officials from Telangana collaborated with a public eye health researcher from LVPEI, Dr Srinivas Marmamula to devise Basic Eye Screening Test (BEST) and implement it.

“BEST has been developed to equip grass-root level health workers to perform basic eye screening right at the doorsteps of the community. It is low cost, quick and takes only 2 to 3 minutes, and acts as a triage for referrals to higher levels of care. Specifically, it is useful for mass community screening programmes. It not only helps to estimate the burden of both distance and near vision loss but also provides information about gross external disorders such as pterygium, corneal scars etc,” Dr Srinivas in his paper on BEST published in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology, said. The public eye health specialist from LVPEI collaborated with senior health officials from Telangana to successfully implement the Kanti Velugu scheme, which was eventually replicated as Dr YSR Kanti Velugu in Andhra Pradesh and will be replicated in New Delhi and Haryana.

The unique feature of the BEST protocol is that the eye screening can be implemented by ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist), Auxiliary Nursing Midwifery (ANM) and other grass-root level health workers after just two hours of training. The BEST protocol is done with the subject wearing spectacles under good lighting conditions and can be completed in four simple steps.