Telangana: Additional teams being formed for Kanti Velugu

The second phase will be conducted for 100 working days from January 18

Hyderabad: Massive arrangements are being made for the second phase of the State government’s flagship Kanti Velugu initiative that will commence on January 18. The government has approved Rs 200 crore for the mass eye screening camps that will be held from 9 am to 4 pm.

Following the instructions of Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, the eye screening camps will be conducted across villages, gram panchayats and municipal wards and officials concerned have been engaged in making arrangements including forming additional teams for the initiative.

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A massive reach out has been taken up to create awareness on the eye camps with Ministers leading the meetings in districts and drawing up schedules during meetings at municipalities and mandal parishad level.

Instructions have been issued to ensure the involvement of elected representatives, officials, local bodies, and stakeholders and the government issued instructions that all efforts should be made to ensure a positive implementation of the initiative.

While the first phase was conducted for eight months by 827 health teams, the second phase will be conducted for 100 working days with 1,500 medical teams. The Kanti Velugu camps will be led by a medical officer while eight other healthcare workers including one optometrist, two ANMs, three ASHA workers and 1 DEO will be manning the counters.

Of the 55 lakh free spectacles to be distributed, 30 lakh will be reading glasses and 25 lakh will be prescription glasses. Attempts were on to ensure that ready-to-use spectacles were sent to the districts before the start of the camps. Specific prescription glasses, however, will be delivered in a month. There would be no shortage of healthcare workers and nearly 1,500 optometrists, 1,500 data entry operators and 969 PHCs doctors will be available for the second phase of Kanti Velugu.