Eye care takes a back seat in Telangana

With the Congress government showing no signs of continuing with the one-of-a-kind ‘Kanti Velugu’, it is the patients from rural areas, who will suffer the most due to lack of access to such specialised and costly eye-care services.

Hyderabad: The general lack of understanding of preventive diagnosis, importance of early treatment, and no clarity on the part of the Congress government has put lakhs of patients suffering from eye ailments in Telangana at the mercy of private eye care providers.

With the Congress government showing no signs of continuing with the one-of-a-kind ‘Kanti Velugu’, it is the patients from rural areas, who will suffer the most due to lack of access to such specialised and costly eye-care services.

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While the government might have its reasons for going slow or ignoring such a unique initiative, the potential consequences of the indecision on public health are undeniable.

Kanti Velugu’s success was its accessibility through massive free eye health check-up camps and quick distribution of reading and power glasses. These services were literally brought to the doorsteps of the underserved communities. In its two phases, the Kanti Velugu initiative screened a staggering 3 crore individuals.

Eye care is expensive and without a Kanti Velugu program, chances are that the 3 crore individuals, who were screened in the earlier phases, either have to go to a private health care facility for check-up or neglect their vision until their situation becomes severe, leading to irreversible damage.

The impact of doing away with free mass eye screening program extends beyond patients. If vision problems are left untreated, it will impact productivity and even trigger a rise in social exclusion because vision impairment often leads to isolation and depression, eye specialists and public health activists in Hyderabad said.

If left undiagnosed, many children would likely struggle with their academic performance in school.

The discontinuation or inordinate delay in rolling out such publicly funded health care initiatives do have economic implications, as it not only affects the patient’s ability to work or earn their livelihood but also health care costs for both patients and governments on the long run, officials who were involved in the earlier phases of Kanti Velugu said.