Slum children to gain new vision

Jyothi B, a five-year-old girl, was blind and  mentally challenged. Her parents, living in a slum, did not pay much attention to what she was going through until she was brought to the free paediatric eye camp for slum children held in December last.

It was arranged by Narayana Nethralaya in association with Seva Bharathi and Aruna Chetana.

She underwent a surgery, and now she can see everything clearly.

On Sunday, Nethralaya conducted another camp for the city’s slum children. A total of 1,349 children from 24 slums were screened. Of them, 176 were suffering from squint vision, short sight or long sight, Dr Anand Vinekar, paediatric retinal surgeon of Nethralaya, said.

“The aim of this initiative is to take eye care to the door steps of the city’s slum children. We plan to screen and treat 10,000 children in the next 12 to 16 months,” said the project coordinator.

Every two months, the hospital will randomly select slums from different zones of the city and examine over 1000 children in a single day.

“Our objective is to give a project report to the Central government as there is no study yet which deals with eye-related disorders among slum children,” Dr Anand said.

 Twenty doctors conducted the camp with the help of 45 volunteers. Children who need surgery will be operated free of cost during the next 15 days.

“Most of the children whom we diagnosed today had undetected eye diseases,” said Dr Rashmi Shetty, ophthalmologist of Nethralaya.

For preschoolers, the camp had a special unit equipped with a machine called Smart system.

 “These children were given a key card containing images of tree, pig, apple and house etc. They had to match the images on card with the ones projected on the screen,” said Jaya, a technician. “In their case, visual problems are identified at an advanced stage.

They also suffer from deficiency of Vitamin A,” Dr Anand said.