Sightsavers India and Government of Karnataka

1. Create an effective, cost effective and scalable model for addressing eye health including Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) in slum population.
2. To improve the eye health seeking behaviour among the targeted urban slum population in Bangalore
3. To strengthen the availability of eye care services in the low income group within a span of two years, reducing the occurrence of blindness

This programme has been designed for a period of two years, with a goal of contributing in reduction of avoidable blindness among low income population in Bangalore. An intervention area of ten densely populated slums in Bangalore has been selected for this programme and been extended to 52 slums.

The focus of this programme would be creating a cost effective and sustainable approach for addressing the eye care issues, especially diabetic retinopathy, among the urban poor.  The project will create awareness on eye care and provision of affordable and quality eye care services for the people residing in these slums so as to ensure that no one becomes blind due to unavailability of treatment for eye conditions like Refractive Errors (RE), Cataract, and Diabetic Retinopathy (DR).

Creating awareness among the community on eye conditions and the need and importance of eye care is one of the main focus of this programme. The health workers and the identified volunteers will make use of posters, and pamphlets to reach out to the people with various eye care messages. On key locations like outside the school, or the community hall, wall paintings will be done in local language namely Kannada, Tamil (in few places), Hindi and English. Wall Paintings will be done in 6” * 4” size emphasising the importance of eye care along with providing the details of the days when the static centre will be functional.

The active ASHA and Anganwadi workers involved in these ten slums will be identified with the help of the health worker and the volunteers. One day training will be organised for these workers on basic eye conditions and the process of undertaking basic screening with the help of E charts and Appearance, Behaviour and Complaints (ABC) report. They will be encouraged to undertake this screening when they interact with the community people. The ABC’s of Vision Problems is described below.

• Nobled in 2014
• Expanded to 52 slums from 10 slums
• Operational 6 days of a week
• 2 Primary Health centres been added in synergy with Government of Karnataka
• Over 300 camps been conducted till date in Urban Slums
• Vision Centre operation weekly 2 days in K G Halli PHC and Amruta Halli PHC
• Over 1 lakhs underprivileged patients been benefitted
• Over 10,000 FREE Spectacles been distributed
• Over 7000 FREE Cataract Surgeries been conducted till date.
• Over 8000 Diabetic Retinopathy FREE Screening