Ramadoss underlines need for more eye donations

Chennai, Nov 19 (UNI) Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Anbumani Ramadoss today underlined the need for more eye donations in India as it requires one lakh eyes annually against 23,000 eyes received last year.

Inaugurating the 'World Sight Day' celebrations here today, he noted that though the requirement is one lakh eyes per year, they only received only 23,000 last year.

''We would certainly achieve the target of Vision 2020- everyone should get sight by 2020- by 2015,'' he asserted He said at present, the blindness prevalence rate in India was 1.1 per cent. Efforts were on to reduce this to 0.8 per cent in the next three years. The country would later reduce the rate further down to 0.3 per cent.

''Last year, the government had targetted to perform 45 lakh cataract surgeries and exceeded the target by performing 49 lakh surgeries. Similarly, Tamil Nadu had also exceeded its target of five lakh cataract surgeries by performing six lakh,'' he said.

He said that 90 per cent of the blindness in the country could be prevented. ''We have screened three crore school children in the country'', he added.

Out of this, 7.5 lakh students were found to have eye disorders and we distributed 3.5 lakh free spectacles to them'', he said.

The Centre would give special focus to childhood blindness control programme, prevention of glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy, he added.

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