'India meets blindness elimination target by 2015'

Chennai, June 11: Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss has claimed that India, home to 12 million blind people, will achieve its blindness elimination target of 0.3 per cent by 2015, five years before the World Health Organisation's (WHO) deadline of 2020.

Inaugurating a high-tech eye speciality centre here last night, he said ''currently, blindness prevalence in India is a little above 1.1 per cent. Looking at the progress we are making, it will be 0.8 per cent by 2010. We are quite sure that the WHO target of 0.3 per cent can be achieved by 2015 before its deadline of 2020.'' Dr Ramadoss said the National Programme for Control of Blindness (NPCB) and Vision 2020 were the most successful programmes among all the Centrally-sponsored health schemes.

''Under these programmes, 70 per cent of the money goes to the private sector. Our Government is pleased with the results,'' he said, adding that India was committed to reduce the burden of avoidable blindness.

The Minister pointed out that ''Cataract is the main reason of blindness in our country and we are conducting more and more camps in both urban and rural areas to deal with it. In 2006, we had performed 5.2 million cataract surgeries across the country.'' He informed that the Centre had decided to start the National School Health Programme, to focus on areas such as eye, ENT and other health related activities.

UNI